I had wondered where the dead bird had gone, but had assumed the captain had tossed it overboard. It was all I could do to stop myself screaming at him in fury.
‘Why have you got that?’ I hissed.
‘Why shouldn’t I have it?’ said my uncle. ‘It’s mine.’
I covered my nose and mouth and peered forward. The albatross glowed slightly – a dull rotten glow – and I could see that it was decaying, with feathers lost and matted and the flesh revealed was speckled with mould. The albatross’s beak was open and its rancid tongue lolled out. Its eyes were clouded.
‘Throw it away,’ I said, disgusted. ‘If they find you with it, they’ll –’
‘Don’t try to take it from me,’ he said, fingering the cross round his neck.
The tone of threat in his voice was clear. I remembered that time in the barn, his knife at my throat.
‘Why did you do it?’ I said after a pause. ‘Why did you kill the albatross?’
My uncle closed his eyes and sighed, as though the question bored him.
‘You would not believe my prowess with the crossbow,’ he said. ‘You thought me a liar.’
‘You could have shot anything!’ I said, angry that he seemed to be trying to involve me in the blame.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, in a quiet voice I would not have recognised as his own. ‘I only knew that I must. It felt right.’
‘Right?’ I said. ‘How could it be right? The bird had done nothing to you.’
He turned to me, his eyes twinkling darkly.
‘If I had shot a woodcock or a pigeon, you would not ask me why.’
‘But you did not kill it for food,’ I said. ‘You killed it for . . . I don’t know what.’
‘And what of that nightingale you shot?’ he said. ‘What was your reason?’
‘I never meant to kill it!’ I shouted.
‘Truly?’ he said, with a cruel twist of his lips.
I stared angrily at him and yet he had touched a nerve somewhere. I found I couldn’t reply. My uncle dropped his head and his face was swallowed by the darkness. I wanted to strike him but I feared him more than my anger would allow. I turned and climbed the ladder. When I looked his way, there was nothing but blackness.
XXI
I knew then that I had been right. His madness had never left him. It had simply been hidden by the goodwill of the ship on escaping the mist. As I looked back, I saw that all that time my uncle had still stood among the shadows in the grip of . . . I could not say what.
I hated him at that moment. I had followed my father to sea – my father who I could scarcely even remember – and I had been lured here to this hell by my uncle, who I hardly knew.
I must have been mad myself. Better by far to have stayed with my mother who I loved like life itself. Never again! I vowed that if I ever held my mother again I’d never leave her. Not for all the treasures in the world.
My home never seemed so dear when set against this nothingness. I longed to see familiar faces and feel the sweet unmoving earth beneath my feet. I would roll in the grass like a lamb. I was full of such dreams.
Then the wind stopped. Winds come and go, all sailors know that, but no wind ever dropped like that one did. One minute the sails were full to bursting, the next they sagged against the mast and the once taut rigging drooped.
The sea, which a moment before had been furrowed by a thousand troughs and foaming crests, was now as flat as a painted dish. The ship slowly came to a halt and sat as still as if we were back in the ice sheet.
The sun blazed. The sky, the sea – everything seemed to take on its golden colour. It was as though the ship were sitting in a pool of molten metal and we were all melting in one gigantic furnace.
Just as we had been trapped by ice, now we were trapped by a flat and windless ocean. And just as we had been crushed by ice, now we were crushed by the heat.
The sun was high above us now, right over our heads. I stood on the whole of my own shadow and we were once again in a world of silence.
No one dared to speak, to mark himself out for special attention. No one moved. It was as though the whole world had ground to a halt and we had become pictures in some book.
I felt I could not even move my eyes. That motion seemed too big a thing in that still world. I thought I would hear the very movement of my eyeballs in their bony sockets.
It was the captain who spoke first and his voice sounded like a bellow in that silence, crashing through it like a stone through a glass pane.
‘Come now,’ he said. ‘The wind has dropped is all. We’ve been through worse and lived to tell the tale. Go about your work and that breeze will blow again, be sure of that.’
There was little to do. Because the ship was becalmed we had no sailing work and this was at least a blessing because we could not have toiled in that heat. Yet the idleness was terrible too. We clustered in the shadows and moved as little as we could that day.
In those few hours, with the lack of distraction, the crew once again turned its angry gaze towards my uncle. He had become linked now with any change in the fortunes of the ship. And though we tried to see this becalming as a natural obstacle to our voyage, we none of us, in truth, believed it to be natural.
My uncle didn’t care, of course. He had no need of us. It was clear from his face that he thought all the crew were fools and that he should pay no heed to them. He obeyed the captain’s orders, but with the air of someone who was pretending obedience.
I wish I could say that I was any different and yet I too felt sure that my uncle’s actions were at the core of our misfortune. In fact, I had even more reason to think this because I knew that my uncle’s mind was more troubled even than the crew might guess.
They had not heard him talk as I had. They had not yet discovered that my uncle was harbouring the rotting body of the albatross. And as much as I despised him, I wouldn’t have sunk so low as to tell them.
I stood at the prow, gazing at the sea as the sun dropped into the horizon, seeming to melt into it like wax. In these waters there was no evening. Night came down like a curtain with fearful suddenness, and with it at last came respite from the sun’s heat.
A group was gathered at the side of the ship and the sounds they made brought all of us over to see what they might be looking at.
I squirmed my way to the rail and looked over. At first I saw nothing other than the night and the still blacker sea marking the horizon. Then I saw that everyone was looking down and I did likewise.
The water was glowing with a dull green light and, under the surface, was a great slimy mass that I thought was weed of some kind. I’d heard of these huge floating islands of seaweed from sailors back at home and assumed that we had been caught in one.
Then I saw the movement: a coiling slippery movement. Strange creatures were sliding over one another, and each new movement sent a shiver through the entire horde and the glow increased in intensity.
The green mass rose up and seemed to reach out slimy tentacles to touch the hull of the ship. The creatures climbed up and slithered along the surface before slipping back under.
All about us was the smell of decay, as though the ship was rotting all at once, whilst the glow was now so bright it illuminated the whole ship and crew with its ghastly light. Blackness surrounded us on all sides, but we shone candle-bright.
Little flares of green and blue and white played across the surface of the water and gave us too clear a view of the hellish creatures there. No nightmare could have been as terrible to see and yet none of us seemed able to turn our backs on this horrible sight.
The vision began to change and the creatures seemed to struggle to escape and the slime became thick and black and smelled of pitch and I could see seabirds raise their heads in silent screams and try to tug their wings free of the morass. Dolphins, turtles, fish of every kind rose out of the slime and slithered and flapped in their death throes.
‘That curse has followed us here!’ sa
id the man standing next to me. ‘It never was lifted! I told you so!’
‘Aye,’ said another. ‘Whatever spirit held us in the ice floe has hunted us down. You can’t escape such things. We’re marked men.’
There was a great deal of murmuring in agreement.
‘Our lives were forfeit as soon as he killed that albatross.’
At the word ‘he’, all faces looked for my uncle, but he was not on deck. A group of men set off to find him and I wondered if we would see a repeat of the execution the captain had abandoned.
The men returned with my uncle. He had clearly been struck and more than once. He was shoved forward. Then the albatross was thrown on to the deck beside him.
‘He’s been keeping that in the hold,’ said the man who had thrown it down.
There were mutters of disgust and shakings of heads and many more simply looked at my uncle in shock and revulsion. The albatross was well beyond the state I’d found it in last time. The flesh was eaten away and hanging in blackened tatters from bones and cartilage. One wing fell open and revealed great holes where the flesh had collapsed.
I saw men with tears in their eyes and there were tears in mine too. To see a bird that had been so majestic and beautiful reduced to such a state as this was heartbreaking. It was as though my uncle had killed it all over again.
This time though, the crew seemed to have no stomach for a hanging. The mood was more of disgust than anger. The captain stepped forward. Two men were holding my uncle by the arms. He roughly tore the cross from my uncle’s neck and hurled it into the sea.
‘You have no right to wear that,’ he said. ‘Stealing from churches. Killing for your own amusement. Sheldon – fetch me a rope. Thin and short.’
Sheldon cut a length of rope and brought it over. The captain tied it round the neck of the albatross and made a loop of it. Then he moved to put it round my uncle’s neck.
‘We don’t all have your taste for killing. We’ll keep our souls free of that taint, for now. You can keep the bird, you murdering madman,’ he said. ‘You shall wear it every day as a reminder.’
My uncle made to protest, but the captain took out his knife and waved the blade in front of my uncle’s face.
‘You either wear it,’ he said, ‘or you wear an anchor and we drop you over the side. If you so much as try to take it off, that’s what will happen. You will –’
But the captain’s voice dried up. When he tried to speak again, nothing would come out. A man nearby called out angrily – or that was his intent, for, just as with the captain, no sound emerged.
One by one each of us tried to speak and each with the same result. We had all – every man jack of us – been struck dumb. And when the silent commotion had settled, those dumbstruck faces turned as one to stare resentfully at my uncle.
The captain dealt my uncle a fierce blow with the back of his hand, and with that the rotting carcass of the once magnificent albatross was hung around his neck.
PART THE THIRD
XXII
The prospect of slowly freezing to death back at the ice floes no longer seemed such a sorry fate, those who had died there simply slipping into sleep never to awake.
We who had survived now found ourselves punished for our survival. We staggered on from one beating to another. And the sense that my uncle was somehow at the root of everything that was happening appeared to be a truth that could not be denied.
Worse than that, he seemed to be protected by the forces that toyed with us. When he was about to be hanged, the ice melted. The captain’s voice was taken from him as he berated my uncle, and our voices too.
The crew had gone from disliking my uncle, to despising him to hating him, and now – now they feared him. Had they not, someone would have put a knife in his back and dumped him overboard without another thought.
Instead, my uncle haunted the ship like a ghost, relieved of any duties and skulking among the shadows with the stinking, rotting albatross glowing palely round his neck, its tattered wings outstretched, their matted tips stroking the deck.
This was a horror to match the frozen world. The becalmed and empty sea was already unnaturally silent, save for the slippery sounds of the creatures trapped in the ooze that covered the ocean floor thereabouts.
Aboard the ship, the only din came from the footfalls of our crew or the slight squeak in the hemp ropes as the heat caused some change in tension in the rigging. If someone dropped a tool or knocked over a bucket, it sounded like the gates of hell had been burst open and we had to cover our ears to shut out the noise. And we looked liked the damned too, our poor bodies starved and wasted.
What next? What new sport was to be had with us? I began to wonder if we had already died back at the ice fields. Perhaps we were going from one circle of hell to another and this would go on for all eternity.
I leaned against the bulwarks looking out to sea and barely had the strength to keep from falling down. My forehead sank lower and lower until it rested on the bleached and weathered wood.
A single bead of sweat fell from my face and struck the deck. It was as though time had slowed and I saw its shimmering sphere plummet and hit the weathered plank, the stain it made drying in a blinked eye.
With no water, no wind, no land in sight, things were hopeless. We did not even have the voice to offer comfort or shout curses or pray for release. The horizon shimmered like the haze over smouldering embers.
I stared at the sea below – at the sticky writhing mass. New creatures became caught up in the dance of death, joining with the decomposing bodies of those already trapped, whilst beneath them I could see plumes of black slime rising from the ocean bed.
I looked to my right and saw my uncle nearby and tears filled my eyes. His head was bowed over the lolling head of the bird, and he muttered noiselessly to himself. He drummed his fingers on the wood of the bulwark and in that silence, of course, it sounded like a rumbling cart.
I wished once more with all my heart that I had never set foot aboard this ship and never laid eyes on my uncle. I wanted to be home with my mother and would have gladly done the dullest chores and never, never would I have wished for adventure again.
I looked out to sea once more. The sun was setting in the west: a great blood-soaked disc sinking. As the edge met the flat horizon, I saw something appear against its crimson glow, like a speck of dirt.
It was hard to look at it at first. Though the power of the sun was waning, it still burned my sight and I just assumed that it was a trick of my weary eyes and fevered brain. I even wiped my eyes and looked again, thinking the speck might have been in my eye rather than on the sea, and yet it did not disappear but became more solid as it increased in size.
I looked for someone to share this with but the only person was my uncle, who shuffled over, the fetid scent of the rotting albatross coming with him. I flinched at the smell and my stomach clenched.
He saw it too. His head jutted forward like a dog watching a rabbit, his eyes sparkling red in reflection of the sun. The skull-head of the albatross lolled horribly. And then, to my horror, my uncle lifted his arm and sank his teeth into his own flesh, as though he was biting at a hunk of beef.
He bared his gums and forced the teeth down through the skin and into the muscle. Blood welled up around his teeth and lips and he lifted his head, lapping at the blood and licking it, savouring it. It was as shocking a sight as I had seen on that terrible journey.
And yet there was some method in his madness. As the blood moistened his tongue and cracked and blackened lips, a faint sound emerged from his throat. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, his teeth coated in blood, and the voice that erupted shook the air.
‘A sail!’ he gurgled. ‘A sail!’
The whole crew started with shock at the sound of a human voice and all heads turned to where my uncle stood.
‘A sail!’ he cried again, louder and more hoarsely this time, pointing to the horizon.
The crew might have been
fit and well, so quickly they leapt to their feet and dashed to our side. They saw that speck, that shape, as we did – and saw clearly now, as we did, that it was a ship.
The crew opened their mouths and again no sound emerged save a dusty hiss. We clambered up the rigging and waved, but these efforts were soon given up as there was no doubt that the ship was already making for ours. And at great speed.
‘You see!’ said my uncle in triumph, his gurgling voice coated in the blood from his arm. ‘She tacks no more! She is headed straight for us!’
His face was wild with excitement, as though he could redeem himself by summoning up this rescue. He leapt about, making the albatross flap and jig like some vile puppet. He grinned a slippery, bloodstained grin.
And it ought to have been a cause for celebration. A ship. It should have raised our spirits. But I saw the face of each man around us fall into first a look of disbelief and confusion, and then, increasingly, a look of dismal dread.
Within moments my face wore the same grim expression, for the sea was as calm as it had always been and not a breath of wind blew. And yet that ship was now close enough to give some view of its details. How could it move so swiftly?
It veered a little in its course and moved between us and the sinking sun. The effect was hideous. The ship was riddled with holes and eaten through with rot and worms. The red sunlight shone between its open boards and black spars like a fire in a brazier.
It sped towards us noiselessly, even though its thin and ragged sails hung limp from broken masts. As it neared us, its rotten hulk became illuminated by the green glow of the creatures that still squirmed about our vessel.
Night fell. The sky turned green then blue then deepest indigo and all within seconds. The blackness of the approaching ship now fitted its surroundings and it looked whole and true again. But we dreaded it.
Was this the Black Ship I had heard so much about? The fabled ship crewed by drowned sailors? I could tell I was not the only one to have such thoughts and men about me crossed themselves and made silent prayer.
The Dead Men Stood Together Page 8