'But you live. You are here drinking wine under the great blue roof of heaven. And is it not sweet? Kill, Patch, or be a corpse. I would rather be alive, brother. And from the many rough miles you have travelled, I think you would, too.'
'It cannot be as simple as you put it.'
'But it is, brother. It truly is.' And he put his arms behind his head, lay back and closed his eyes. The sun shone down on us both, but as I too stretched out to bask in its warmth a chill whispered through me, although the day held no shadows.
I went on watch at five bells and Dimitri put Will to cleaning the blades that had found so much work on shore. There was still no sign of Anna, but there was plenty to be done as the Cormaran sailed out of the Gironde and into a perfect sea, and I was glad to empty my mind of anything but the wind and the ropes. We rounded the Pointe de Grave and turned south, gliding past the long dune of Arcachon towards Bayonne. The sun fell slowly towards the forests away to the west and at last, as the brazier was lit to heat our dinner, Anna appeared on deck. We were about to put the ship about, and I could not leave my station, but she saw me and raised her hand. She wore a simple tunic of some dark, rich-looking stuff, and her black hair was pulled back and hidden under a simple white coif. She looked both pure and alluring and my blood began to whisper softly in my ears. That is your woman,' it said. I shook my head in happy disbelief, then as the sail cracked and bellied there was a minute of wild activity, and when I made fast my rope and turned to her again, she was stepping into the cabin and did not look back. Gilles followed and closed the door behind them. It was no more than I had expected. Mikal had eaten with the crew, but the Princess Anna Doukaina Komnena could hardly be expected to squat around a cauldron and bandy words with the likes of us, although I knew she would probably prefer to. But all the same my dark humours crept over me again, and when someone tapped me on the shoulder to relieve me of the watch I could hardly bring myself to make the few paces over to the brazier.
Tonight there were stories to be told and I did not want to tell mine, but knew it would be dragged from me anyway. I took no pleasure in the memory of what I had done, but I obliged when my turn came, and discovered, as the demijohns of good Bordeaux wine went around, why soldiers tell their war stories. The telling and retelling began to ease some hurt deep within me. I am not one of those men to whom each killing is a mark of pride, and in truth I believe I carry each cut I have inflicted on others in some scarred quarter of my soul. That night, though, as we danced every murderous step again, I became part of the Cormaran for good. I had fought and I had killed, and tonight I brought currency of my own to the circle of men, and as I stood and showed for the third time how I had stuck my knife up under a man's ribs and held him until he breathed his soul into my face I found I was among friends, and home at last.
Later I slept like a thing of stone, to be awakened at dawn by the tossing of the ship beneath me. We had run into a storm off San Sebastian, and it chased us down to the Pillars of Hercules, green water a never-ending torrent across the decks and lightning playing about the mast-top. Will, whom the crew had taken to with a vengeance, did his best to learn sail-craft in between hours spent puking off the stern. He was wan company at best but it gave me a simple, boyish pleasure to teach what I knew of this strange new world to my friend. He must have found my ease and enthusiasm a little wearing, and began to tire of my assurances that the sickness would soon pass, I who had never suffered it. But unlike many I have known, who have begged to be put ashore, or even weakly tried to put an end to themselves, Will tottered about his work doggedly, and the crew, and I, loved him all the more.
The Pillars were a gateway indeed, and sailing through we left the dismal weather behind. I must have made a fool of myself, running from one side of the ship to the other, straining my eyes this time towards Spain and the great bulwark of the Gibr-al-Tariq, this time over to the distant brown shores of Africa. We were in a different world entirely, it seemed, a place of hot breezes and warm nights. Will's sea-legs found him at last, and we marvelled at how lean he had grown. 'I have puked my old life away,' he said in wonder. For the first time in my life I went about shirtless and my skin turned from its waxen English white to livid, smarting red and then to a deep brown. Even my teeth were feeling better. The only thing missing was Anna.
Since revealing herself to the crew she had kept her distance. I understood why, of course. She could not throw on her sailcloth tunic and go back to being Mikal, and I knew that when she had first come aboard she had feared the men - not without reason, although she had won over most hearts, I believed. She would be safe amongst them, though perhaps no longer comfortable. But it was me she was taking pains to avoid, and fool that I was I could not fathom the reason for it. She spent her days with the Captain and with Gilles, or with Nizam up on the steering deck, my own favourite place on the Cormaran, which I no longer had time to visit. Even Will, whose roguish spark had well and truly kindled itself again, would find time to lean on the rail and tell her things that made her laugh. When we did talk she was distant or distracted, and the one night when we shared the Captain's table she barely said a word to me. I missed her horribly, although she was there before my eyes every day. Then I began to worry, and worry tumbled with guilt and confusion until I had convinced myself that everything was my fault. She had never wanted to share my bed: I had forced her. Then I had led her fecklessly into danger and forced her to kill. Now she undoubtedly hated me as much as I was beginning to hate myself.
These were becoming black days, despite the glory of the weather and the friendly sea, and we were no more than two days' sail from the Pillars when I began my rapid fall into a despair deeper than I had ever imagined man could suffer in this life. The humours of melancholy filled me as smoke from a guttering candle fills and blackens a closed lantern. The fight returned to me again and again, sometimes as a blur, sometimes in horrible detail, far clearer than it had been at the time. I felt again and again the resistance and then the give of the man's innards against my knife. I remembered that I had smelled shit as he died, and that his bowels must have let go. And then the face of Deacon Jean would return to me full of terrified outrage at what was happening to him. I heard, again and again, the hot splash of his blood on the floor of the cathedral, and it mingled with the screams of the mad hermit of the island after I had wounded him. So much death, so much pain; and all at my hand, all on my account. And Anna . . . Perhaps because our night together had been so violently changed from love to bloody riot, I could hardly think of what we had done together without it seeming a defilement, and I the defiler. I began to have dismal, churning dreams, and then sleep itself came less and less often, which was a blessing. I took to avoiding company — even that of Will - when I was not needed; and would sit behind a water butt, my arms clutching my knees, silent and still as the hours passed by.
I had all but forgotten the miraculous chance that had bought Will back, so much so that sometimes, as my afflicted conscience gnawed me, I would see him struck down by Sir Hugh's flail and add his death to my burden of guilt, even though he walked the deck a few yards away. Mostly I took his presence for granted, and he had the good sense to leave me to myself. He seemed to know when the shadows were not so thick around me, and then we would be easy with each other once more. One night, after the sun had set with its usual magnificence behind the hills of Spain, the stars had appeared and the Cormaran’s wake glowed and sparkled faintly, I felt so overwhelmed by the beauty of it all that I felt a sudden need to blot out this lovely world on which I was but a stain. So I sought out a full wineskin and set about emptying it into myself. Had the ocean been wine I would have gladly jumped overboard with mouth open, but although no wineskin could hold enough to dull my torment I found myself, at some later point in the evening - the intervening parts having vanished from memory - leaning heavily on the forward rail and regarding the blade of the new moon which was sinking, yellow as a sheaf of ripe corn, below the invisible horizon.
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The stars blazed here in the south, as bright as a winter's night in Devon. With the fixation, the false clarity of mind that comes with drink, I tried to fathom the unimaginable distances between my little self bobbing on the sea and the moon, set in its crystal sphere, and beyond it past the planetary spheres to the sphere upon which the stars were fixed, and even further, to the Primum Mobile itself. Brother Adric had given me Ptolemy's Almagest to read at the Abbey, and, although I had understood what was written therein as an ant understands a pachyderm, the vast machinery of equants and deferants, the wonderful, logical complexity of it all had never ceased to fill me with joy and wonder. Tonight, however, I was thinking of distances, endless tracts of emptiness and the lonely music of the spheres as they turned in their immutable orbits. The moon was waxing and there was the faintest hint of the old moon caught in the calliper-grasp of her arms.
Will came to lean beside me and we passed a wineskin back and forth and watched the strange glow of the wake. I wanted to be alone and so said nothing, but after a while he cleared his throat.
'I am intruding on your . . . solitude, Patch,' he said. I shrugged and kept silent, but he went on.
'I know what melancholy feels like, brother,' he murmured. I turned to him in surprise despite myself.
‘You?'
Yes, why not? It was early in my time with . . . the company. I was brought very low, low enough to wonder how quick a rope around my neck would get the job done. I didn't get very far, but I thought about it very carefully. Probably thought about it too much, actually, because while I was agonising and debating I began to feel better, and little by little the life came back into me.'
'But why? What made you?'
'There is much I cannot . . .' he paused, and gave me the most haunted look I had ever seen upon his face. 'I do not know. The shock of being cast out of my familiar world, perhaps. The knock on the head. Many things can stir up the black bile. It is done, though. That's what I wanted to tell you: it passes. Time is as good as any potion, of that I am convinced.'
'I have thought about it too,' I admitted, unwillingly. 'But it seems too easy an escape.'
'And what of the comforts of Mother Church?' he asked. 'It was no help to me, but you . . .'
'No comfort there, Will.' I told him a little of my epiphany in the cathedral at Gardar.
'There has been a burden on you for a long time, then,' he said. 'Loss of faith ... I am no theologian, no Albertus Magnus, God forbid! And I never really had faith like you did, Patch - horrible confession, is it not? Do not tell me that you did not suspect! But when the faithful are stripped of all they believe, they are like a stone house gutted by fire: the walls stand, but all within is gone: rooms, stairs, decorations, beds, tables, everything familiar, gone. If the walls are sound the house may be rebuilt inside - in time. But it will not be familiar, Patch - it will not be home.'
'No Albertus Magnus? You are right there. Hardly even a hedge-scholar, brother!' But Will had found me out. My faith was gone, and although I did not wish to regain it - strange how fast a lifetime's habits of thought can come to seem like childish superstition - the hollow it had left had yet to be filled with anything as sustaining.
'I live like a beast,' I told him. 'I breathe, I eat, sleep, work ... I have no purpose other than to remain alive. And I am less and less sure why I bother even to do that.'
'But life itself - what more is there? You have the Cormaran, and the brotherhood of this fine crew of villains, myself included. You have two arms, two legs, two eyes, you are strong . . . and what of all you have learned? Does that not fill you up?'
I raised my arms hopelessly. 'I am filled, brother: up to the brim with guilt,' I said. WHiat good is it to keep yourself alive if you must do it at the cost of others? I live like a beast, but I am no beast. I am a man, and if God or his son Jesus Christ will not judge me, then I must judge myself.'
'Aha!' cried Will. 'I have found you out! You are like that snake who eats his own tail, the . . .the . . .' he snapped his fingers in frustration.
'Ouroboros,' I muttered.
'Exactly. But instead of your tail, you have rammed your head up your own fundament and are gnawing away at your tripes. You are blind to anything but yourself - anyone but yourself. Pull your head out, Patch. It must be very dark up there.'
'It isn't like that,' I whimpered.
'Then how is it? Have you learned nothing since we left home? You must seize hold of life and squeeze it until the juice comes. Patch, you were doing a fine job until I came along. What about Lady Anna? How do you think . . .'
'I will not talk about the Princess Anna!' I snapped, jumping up in a rage that caught us both by surprise.
'Peace, peace - I meant nothing and you know it. Now sit down and take another drink.'
And so I did, but only stayed for another minute. Then with a civil 'goodnight' I took myself off to my berth. I lay sleepless that whole night until at last my anger melted into self-pity. Who or what I raged against I did not know, for I was no more the master of my moods than a bee caught in a hurricane can choose which way to fly. I longed for someone - it was too hard even to name that someone to myself - to come to me and wash away my sins, as I knew was in her power. But no sacrament would be given that night, and instead the stars were my company, mocking me with their cold distance.
We were hurrying across this beautiful sea. Land lay always to port, but far away: no more than a low purple bruise on the horizon. We were following a course towards the coast of Italy and a rendezvous in the great city of Pisa: that at least I knew from the Captain, but if he confided more I do not remember, so wrapped in misery was I. I say wrapped: it did indeed feel as if I were caught up in a winding-sheet but still walked, my limbs alive, my insides dead. Isaac began to watch me closely and ply me with potions and pills - dill, rue, hyssop, bee-balm and other wonders from his store which I had never heard of but which tasted as bitter as any roadside weed. Under his ministrations the melancholy would ebb sometimes, long enough to marvel at the clever porpoises and dolphins who came to visit the Cormaran, weaving in and out of our wake and racing with us, a race they always won with ease. On such days Will and I would find our old delight in each other's company, although I sensed that he treated me carefully, as if I might break suddenly. One day I saw a shoal of fish leap out of the water all at once and spread wings. Like silver swifts they glided stiffly for a distance, then plunged back into the deeps. Soon this miracle - miracle for me, although the other men hardly paid it any mind - became a commonplace, and when a brace of the magical fish missed their aim and crashed to the deck, I hardly noticed when they were added to the night's meal. I became a zealous fisherman, as it was the best excuse for spending my free hours leaning over the side, staring into the sea. I was not interested in what I caught, but the crew were: strange, lovely and occasionally hideous creatures that all tasted good enough. Once, I think the day after we raised the island of Formentera and were creeping past the mountains of Mallorca, I dropped my line unknowingly into a great shoal of mackerel and, as I hauled them up, frantically tying more and more hooks to my line, every man with a free hand rushed to the side with their own lines and soon the deck was carpeted with a writhing, stranded shoal that gleamed and rippled like living chain-mail. Everyone — even the Captain and Gilles, even Anna - waded in to gather them up, stun them and throw them into one of the salting barrels that Guthlaf had pulled from the hold. It was as I bent to this task that I heard a squeal and saw Anna fending off a mackerel that flapped and jerked in her arms. She flung it away, stooped and picked up another struggling fish which, with a triumphant laugh, she threw at one of the crew. Her aim was good: the mackerel hit Will square on his crooked nose.
Like all those who suffer a surfeit of melancholy I was drawn more and more inside myself, studying as if with an inner eye the sooty and damaged rubric of what I took to be my soul. It is hard to look back on those days with any great sympathy for myself, for the humours made me
selfish, sour and unfriendly, and those traits are not easily borne in a community as tight-knit as a ship. It says much for the good nature of the crew that they did not heave me overboard, but it must have been a great temptation for them at times. But I was oblivious to the feelings of others, indeed I barely noticed them, so intent on anatomising my worthlessness had I become. But looking up at that moment to see the look of pure happiness on Anna's face, and finding it mirrored in Will's, brought me to my senses like a whiff of sal ammoniac. While I had brooded - how many days had it been? Weeks, perhaps? - life had been going on without me. Things had been happening under my nose. I had turned my feelings for Anna over and over like meat on a spit, watching them become shrivelled and burnt. Out here in the sunshine, though, Anna was happy and quite unconcerned.
Or so it seemed. Now it is easy to see that I was not looking directly at the world. Instead I was peering into the mirror held up for me by melancholy, which distorted and corrupted all that appeared in it. So I did not see Anna's happiness for what it was: the proof that my fears for her were groundless. Instead I searched the mirror for a more sinister meaning, and it was not long in revealing itself. For there stood Will, my worldly, wicked friend, and the look he was giving Anna was one I had seen a thousand times before in the low houses of Balecester.
The unwholesome epiphany I was granted from Anna and Will's mackerel-fight worked a miraculous cure, as epiphanies are wont to do. From that moment on I found my senses clear and life once again humming within me. I was mistaken, though, if I believed that my melancholy humour had been cast out. It had instead transmuted itself from the base matter of despair to the harder, brighter metal of jealousy. But like any good poison, this one did its work slowly and insidiously, although I would not understand this until it was too late. At that moment, standing bare-chested in the hot sun with my arms full of slimy, writhing fish, I was suddenly feeling something like my old self. Without thinking, I lobbed the mackerel in my hand at Will who, faced with scaly assault from two quarters, ducked behind the mast and aimed another fish at me. It went wide and hit Carlo in the stomach and he, thinking Dimitri behind the wicked deed, launched an attack of his own that signalled out-and-out war on deck. If a flying-fish had chanced to peer over the rail as he glided past he would have been treated to the marine version of hell itself: a writhing bedlam of half-naked men hurling fish, beating one another about the head with fish and treading live fish underfoot, hooting and screeching the while like a legion of Beelzebub's fiends. It had been long months since the men of the Cormaran had been allowed their heads in this way - they had missed a true shore-leave in Dublin and Bordeaux - and the Captain let the melee run its course, even permitting Istvan to belabour him with a fast-disintegrating dog-fish that had thrown in its lot with the wrong shoal.
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