by Ed Gorman
The principal hotels had an air of European luxury and were designed to handle a dozen different languages and tastes, from the Slavic to the Mediterranean. Crimson took the Maycombs to the most lavish and expensive one, L'Hotel D'Avignon, in hopes of seeing just how freely the couple parted with their money. Maycomb was already known by the managers, who always kept an ear out for the names of the wealthy who might be traveling this quarter of the world.
They sat in an elegantly appointed room filled with exquisitely appareled travelers. The pirates kept away from places such as these; few had the gumption to cross boundaries that might bring down the wrath of more than one nation at a time. Assassins stalked these halls and kept watch on the envoys of enemy republics. She listened to four languages she recognized and two she'd never heard before.
Instead of whiskey they ordered wine and several dishes of small game and puddings, then sat in a dining area so extravagant that Crimson actually found herself growing a tad embarrassed. It was something she hadn't felt since she was a child, and its unfamiliarity made her almost heady. She sipped the Superior Claret and waited for them to begin their story.
Elaine Maycomb, wrapped in her gaudy pink scarf and with eyes puffy from exhaustion, tried hard to remain composed. There was a stoic tilt to her chin but she was having difficulty maintaining it, on the verge of going into a swoon. Maycomb, with a skull full of vipers, took no notice of his wife's fatigue. He'd already had enough wine to flatten three men but wasn't affected. She knew the type of troubles it took to keep a man sober after so much liquor. He hadn't even begun slurring his words yet, which proved he had great command over himself, at least in this. They'd been on ship for days with a ruffian crew, and Crimson wondered why Lady Maycomb didn't retire to a comfortable bed and let her husband carry on in these matters alone.
Crimson set down her glass and pushed her plate away. "It's not often easy for those who seek to engage my services to relate their histories and predicaments," she said. "But that's the only way we can do business. I won't go leaping into deep waters without knowing why or what might lie in wait for me. And if you lie about these circumstances and I find out about it—and I will—you'll be sorry you ever ventured off your tobacco farm."
"You've quite austere conditions, considering you're a pirate," Maycomb said with a haughty tone.
"You're right, but that's my way."
"So I've been told."
Elaine Maycomb sensed the possible conflict here and interjected. "It's about our daughter. She's only nineteen and unversed with the world and its complexities. Her name is Daphna."
"What about her?"
"She—well, she, you see—"
"Yes?"
A silence overtook the table and lengthened until Crimson nearly slid the silverware onto the floor just to hear the clatter. Maycomb steeled himself and said, "She attended finishing school outside of London. Late last autumn she met a man named Villaine."
"I've heard of him. A privateer who sails mostly along the merchant lanes outside of Cuba."
"That is so, as we understand it. Apparently he often returns to Westminster where he keeps up some of the veneer of his previous society life. Like so many of these freebooters, he once held a position of office among the Queen's Navy before he turned his energies to marauding."
"Piracy is a near noble calling compared to tenure in the British Navy." Crimson should've held her tongue and not interrupted the man as he related his story, but the subject caused her grief whenever it was brought up. "That war cost the Empire a lot of good men, however you look at it. Between those that've died and those who've run off, I'd hope old Queen Anne is vigilant enough to stay her hand from other foolish skirmishes."
"It's my hope too."
"Pardon my outburst. Continue."
Maycomb crossed his knife and, fork in his empty plate and glanced over at the other men in the hall smoking after-dinner cigars and pipes. He licked his lips for the taste of it, and Crimson was surprised he didn't have a tobacco pouch. Someone must've stolen it aboard the Hopewell. The smoke drifted and twined across the crystal chandelier, and she thought of her nightmare again, the vapored breath breaking against Tyree's chin.
Keeping his voice firm but hushed, Maycomb said, "We did not know of the affair until after he and Daphna set sail for the Yucatan. I admit that my somewhat stolid ways, as well as the great distance between us, allowed for such an impressionable girl to fall for so worldly a figure. I should have kept closer watch on her. I've really only myself to blame."
"No more reproach falls to you than to myself, Trevor," Elaine Maycomb said, and placed her hand atop of his.
"How did you learn of all this?" Crimson asked.
"We hired a Fleet Street investigative agent named Widdins to set upon the case. Villaine wasn't so difficult to trace, though he and Daphna had been rather discreet, considering. Still, a girl has need of sharing her excitement, and she confided in various friends of hers at school. Widdins fell to tracking them and kept in contact with us via other agents. He mentioned that Villaine and Daphna might have taken refuge on the island of Benbow."
Crimson drew breath between her teeth. She tried not to react but her fingers spasmed against her glass and sent a harsh note ringing all across the room. Welsh had to be her father—in times of pressure, her hands often shook. She looked up from beneath the heavy curls of her hair. She tongued the spot where she'd bitten through her lip last night.
"Little more than two hundred miles south of us," she said.
"Have you been there?"
"No, but I know of it. Almost everyone in the Bahamas does. Did your agent land on Benbow?"
"He was supposed to do so, but we never heard word again. We don't know if he was killed by Villaine or other pirates, fell to disease or, in truth, what may have happened. Now that we've come so far and come this close to our daughter we refuse to abandon our obligation."
"She's just a child caught up in these worldly ventures," Lady Maycomb said. "Please aid us if you can. I must see my Daphna again, if only to hold her one last time and say goodbye."
Crimson rested her hands in her lap and shook her head. "This isn't my sort of affair."
"Pardon?"
"She's of age. If she wishes to be with Villaine then that's their decision. I see no reason for you to interfere or for me to intercede."
Maycomb finished his wine and ordered another bottle. His wife stared glassily at him but he ignored her and continued drinking. "I understand your reservations, and under normal circumstances I wouldn't dare ask you or anyone to aid me in this matter. However, we've received other disturbing news from friends and colleagues in these waters.”
“About Villaine?"
"That and...other concerns."
Crimson said, "Name them."
"You know of Benbow's notoriety."
"Yes," she said, "as I said, everyone does in these waters. They say it's a cursed island. Particularly among the slaves and South Americans you'll find such prevailing stories. Benbow has a malevolent reputation. The myths go back hundreds of years, I'd guess, but saw a new resurgence a decade or so ago. A ship full of Africans coming in from Ghana was burned there by a trader angry with his competitors. Some sixty captives were burned alive and a few, supposedly, didn't die. They were taken to the depths by the devil. In hurricane season they're stirred to the surface where they set about and feast on men."
Maycomb had obviously heard the tale. He may have been a proper Brit but she realized he had a superstitious streak beneath his lordly exterior. "And what do you think? Is it only a grand legend?"
"Not so grand. I'd say Villaine might have chosen a better place to put in. Quite possibly he settled there to take advantage of its unfavorable repute. It would help keep strangers away. Whether government officials or other buccaneers who might attempt to sack him."
"In the West Indies, there are those who believe in beasts known as the Loogaroo."
Crimson willed her fingers to
stop trembling and poured herself another glass of wine. She tried not to swig it and hoped to appear calm. She had perfected a stony countenance long ago, but now she could feel the facade about to crack and slip. "Go on."
"The creatures are also said to have once been human, men and women who've made a pact with Satan or some old world god, receiving profane powers in exchange for offerings of blood. The Loogaroo is a shapeshifter that's presumably entered the Caribbean from Guinea and the African Congo. On the ivory coast they call it Asanbosam."
"So they say."
"I spent a great deal of time in Scotland as a child. There, this beast, if it exists, is known as the Boabhan Sith, a parasite that disguises itself and lures travelers to their deaths. The Germans have another name for it, the Blutsauger. In Ireland, the Dearg-Due."
She did not need a history lesson in this area. She'd met people from all across the face of the earth and heard the epic fables and mythologies. The Chinese named it His-Hsue-Kuei, the "suck-blood demon." Brazilians knew the Jaracacas, which appeared in the shape of a snake feeding from the breast of a nursing mother, which pushed the infant out of the way and kept it quiet by shoving its tail into the baby's mouth. Until the beast grew tired of milk and began feasting on blood. She knew of at least a dozen more such tales.
"You've quite an imagination, Mr. Maycomb."
"I pride myself on my reason and common sense."
"Perhaps most men of wild fancies do, sir."
Elaine Maycomb, who had offered nothing to this thread of the conversation, turned pale and managed to cough a single word loose from deep in her chest. "Daemonia Wampyros."
"There's no such critter," Crimson replied, as she always would.
Maycomb eyed her for a moment. "Have you ever been in love, Lady Sanglant Cheveaux?"
"The hell kind of question is that, you pompous bastard?"
"We've heard that you know something of these matters. That you yourself have lost one dear to you."
"You've been told lies."
"You needed to know my circumstances and now you do. I'll pay whatever price you ask. I want to hire a private vessel and have you lead us to Villaine's refuge. Once there, you can leave immediately if you so wish."
"You can both sink to the bottoms." Crimson toppled her chair as she stormed out, hoping none of her enemies approached just now. She wouldn't be able to draw her cutlass with these damn hands. Her lip was bleeding again and she sucked at it, tasting the blood as it filled her mouth.
She spat it out on the lobby floor.
3
In the deep night, she gazes down from her snow-covered tower staring at the ice-choked sea and the splintered hulls of shipwrecks crushed against the rocks. Masts lay shattered and askew, lines flail in search of victims. Torn sails flap and hang loose as the shredded clothes of murdered men.
She glances at the cliffs and wonders if she'll ever have the strength to leap to a complacent, satisfying death. So peaceful and extraordinary. There are dead sailors there, she thinks, drifting in the waves and crawling about on the reef. They wait with soulless gazes, gesturing to her, beckoning, always and forever watching. Some of them are her former crew members, some family.
Her mother is immersed in the rushing waters, with her nightgown floating up around her shoulders. Mama with her eyes glowing yellow and peering up at her, arms raised.
She brushes the curtains and those faces in the drapes glower and glare. No wonder Mama gave up so early, so young. No one could live for long with the weight of so much evil bearing down all the time.
The snow falls.
Turning, she hears the rustling of her husband's entrance.
He slips inside through the bolted door and whispers for her. "Cassandra." This has happened many times before, and yet she can remember no particulars—only the constant burden of failed responsibility. The unrelenting blackness grows thicker each night because of this.
Now she feels him here, gliding across the room towards her as his features take shape in the dark. Mama is singing so far below, one of the Irish songs about open fields of battle and dying beloved horses. The Irish whimpered over every ache but they knew how to sing of glory and tragedy. It could make you fall to your knees weeping when nothing else would. Mama goes on.
Clouds slither across the sky. Curtains snap against his collar and his long black hair is silhouetted by the moon, framing each angle of the face she knows so well. His arm reaches past and slowly closes the shutters, as though he's aware of her thoughts. There was a time when she enjoyed that, feeling him warmly nestled inside her mind. His cloak sweeps against her thigh and she recalls dancing with him across marble verandas in Jamaica.
As the shutters squeak and ease together the light dwindles to almost nothing, until she is alone with him and the complete gloom of their attachment. Devotion is damnation. The cold intensifies until she's shuddering violently, teeth chattering, knowing her love has found her again. She reaches out hoping to grab hold of him, if he's there. He's always there.
"Cassandra."
"Leave me, Tyree."
"No."
"You must, for your own endless rest.”
“Never, love."
"Be at peace."
"Only with you."
His voice is very much the same, most of the time, and it lifts her heart too far when she hears it. This is truly what hell is, she thinks: the living hope for the love of a dead man.
What more can God do to her?
Nothing, she decides, and with that belief comes resolution, even relief. It's exactly what she's been waiting for, here in her tower. She backs up to the bed and lays back against the thick covers once more. She's as ready as she can be, and prays it is enough.
"Then come back to me."
"I cannot," he tells her. "I try but it is so...difficult...even this... touching you in this way..."
"What...?"
There are lives beyond the daylight, plateaus one can only reach in nightmare. Mama taught her that, back when the fever gripped her and she went off to strange and foreign places. He travels the same byways.
It has always been like this, since she lost him. The struggling about in murkiness, the driving fear, and the oppressive ballast of their passion. Desire that no longer exists in the living world.
Perhaps she's only gone utterly insane. That, if nothing else, would be a great comfort.
Her frosted breath rises and again bursts against the jutting stone angles of his hard face. It is an image that draws her back into herself. She can taste the wine she was drinking with Maycomb and his wife. Benbow. They want her to go to the island of Benbow.
It's a refrain of the mind that conjures dread. Haunted waters swell and surge, and the bottoms are heavy with drowned men buried in mud. Those who wait for the storms to come.
"Tyree?" she asks. "Are you there on Benbow? Am I supposed to find you there. Tell me so I'll know what to do."
"Let's not talk of that now, Cassandra."
Sometimes he can almost sound exactly like the man he'd once been, filled with the same charm and an eagerness towards laughter. There's a slight chuckle beneath his words, the kind that always made her smile. An appealing brazenness originally drew her to him, but it was the times of quiet playfulness that kept her. She cannot help wondering how much of him is left and if, somewhere inside himself, he is screaming for her to do what must be done.
She ought to find a virgin boy, place him on a horse of solid white and lead them across the island's graveyards. Moving from east to west, following the sun's course. That's what she should do. When the horse is unable to pass over a grave she'll know what lies within. She'll be ready to use the hoops of iron to break his limbs and, when he arises, she'll stake the body with ash wood and hack his head off with the sickle or her cutlass. Thorns will be placed under the tongue so he'll never drink such a sanguine brew again.
After she's done weeping and can gather her strength once more, she'll pull herself from the mud and f
inish what she's started. This is how it must be. She'll bury the head face down so that, if it still lives, it can do nothing but burrow into the dirt with all those teeth.
"What's that noise?" he asks.
"Mama."
"Your mother?"
"In the water. Trying to protect me."
Again there's that slight laughter just under the surface, waiting to be expressed. "She's strong."
He's talking about her spirit, she understands, and how hard it is for any of them to battle through the veils of the afterlife.
"Yes, she always was, even on her deathbed before she finally relented. What is it you want, Tyree?"
"You know already."
It's true, she does.
His lips crush against hers but she moves aside, thinking like a fighter now as she shoves against his chilled flesh. There's only a moment of resistance and then it's as though he's not even there anymore, only a puff of freezing air. Instantly he's behind her and blocking her path. She needs to get to the pillows and the ash wood and pike hidden beneath them.
There are things that need killing here. That's the fire that stays with her. Mama's lament continues to carry and that gives her the will to keep going. Her hands flex and then squeeze into fists. The quaint pain of fingernails digging into her palms holds her determination in place.
He says her name again and now they're each moving a little faster because their time is nearly over for the night. The dream is leading them towards dawn and a waking life where the sun burns away such phantoms, for a time. "Cassandra." Tyree repeats it once more, making the word lyrical. A lullaby that shall rock her into complacency. This is what he does, drawing it out with his inhuman tongue as if sucking at it like it was her neck. She frowns, knowing they've passed this way many times before since his death. "Cassssssandraaa."
She is a pirate, and she's not afraid of blood. "Enough of that, you bastard. My name is Crimson."
"Oh yes, yes..."
"Sweet words only count for so much.”
“...love..."