Deluded Your Sailors (37 page)

I got called away, deliberately, so Captain Cleasby might ask of Finn his own questions. Then we came ashore, and I saw more sad proof of gold prying my captain apart. I took notice of as much as I could, for I would need report these events to the Admiralty.

My reports would ruin Cleasby.

Throughout the night I tried to reason with Captain Cleasby.

I tried sense. I tried orders. Naught would budge him from the damned gold. I questioned Finn repeatedly on the matter of the Benvolian gold in Cleasby's presence, but Finn kept mute. My words blended around us like threads of fog; I heard my voice and wondered who spoke. Finally, Cleasby needed to go on deck. I dropped my voice low and spoke of Runciman and the old Barbary wound. Finn still said naught. Captain Cleasby returned, refreshed by the air above and a draught of rum. He ordered me to rest, noting my long watch and mounting phlegm, adding I would need my energies in few enough hours. I had to leave. I could not at that delicate time risk inflaming the captain, nor risk my own freedom.

So I left them, hearing Cleasby's voice as I shut the door, ‘Now, sir, there remain two matters: murder and gold. Where shall we start?'

When Captain Cleasby gave the order to hang Constant Pilgrim for murder, I knew my enterprise had nearly come undone. Captain Cleasby did think correctly in one thing: whatever my agenda, whatever my policy, there remained the question of justice for the murders on board
Kindly One
. We should have transported Pilgrim and Finn back to England to stand trial. Indeed that had been Runciman's desire and final firm reason to haul Finn home. But in Captain Cleasby's gold-rotten mind, these two were murdering pirates. He'd been told so. We kept Finn and Pilgrim separate, and I could read in each face not just fear but their need to talk to each other. I played their minds and loyalties with different scenarios of punishment and freedom, but neither betrayed the other.

I joined Captain Cleasby in the lieutenants' mess. He was alternately cajoling and threatening Pilgrim about the gold, but Pilgrim said naught, did not even look at Cleasby, only sat at the table, hands out in front of him, palms down. Then Cleasby struck Pilgrim with the back of his hand, knocking the man out of his chair. We waited, for Pilgrim stayed a moment crumpled on the boards before he unfolded his long-boned body and got back up into the chair, where once more he sat, hands on the table in front of him, bleeding from the mouth, silent. Then Cleasby tacked away from the gold towards
Kindly One
again, reminding Pilgrim of how pirates may be hanged from the yardarm of the capturing vessel.

Still Pilgrim kept silent, blood marking his shirt. To my relief as well as Pilgrim's, Cleasby left the mess and did not order me come with him. Now I could ask the colonist what he knew.

Pilgrim said naught to me for almost an entire watch. Bells marked the beginning and bells would mark the end of four hours of us sitting together. I told him, gently, how I knew of Finn's history, of Benvolio and the stolen gold, but no reaction surfaced in Pilgrim's face. I tasked him on the murders, on responsibilities and duties to the law and to God. He became very angry, arguing with me that Finn has committed murder yet was not responsible.

Evasion, I thought. He surprised me.

She is not responsible, he argued. She had killed a man who'd attacked her some years before, and the luckless Captain Tilley.

Finn was female.

(Here Kelly became angry with me as I hurried to cool his forehead, I arguing delirium, he promising he'd come to the proof and demanding I let him be.)

This complicated everything. Then Pilgrim said ‘About the murders on
Kindly One
, Mr Kelly. Finn was not responsible. They happened at my hand. The first did be an old quarrel, the second an accident, but I killed them.' He cocked his large head just the slightest bit and asked, ‘Do you really think someone as small as Matt Finn could kill one man, let alone two?'

I found Cleasby on deck. ‘I am weary,' he said to me, turning away from Pollard, the surgeon, who was leaning on the starboard gunwale and gazing out the narrows. ‘I am weary of strange demands made on me by inferiors. Have you gleaned anything useful, sir, anything at all, from the colonist?'

I asked if we might discuss the matter in his cabin. Cleasby said, ‘Another demand,' but to his cabin we went, and there I told him how Pilgrim had confessed.

‘A knotty enterprise, this,' Cleasby responded. ‘If the man confessed, then the man must hang.'

I protested vigorously, saying we must transport Pilgrim and Finn to England, where any matters of trial and piracy would be settled, adding that I did not trust the confession.

But Cleasby chose his own course. And mark me, Cannard, he chose, as clearly as he chose whether first to eat biscuit or pease.

‘You do not trust his confession,' he said, passing me a fresh handkerchief. ‘Yet he has freely made it. And he is not the man we needs pressure, for it is Finn and Finn alone who knows where the prize is kept. No, no dissent, I know there is prize still, as much as I know there are bones beneath my flesh. Let us assume for the moment Pilgrim did kill those men, as he has freely confessed, we putting nothing harsher to him than questions. If he killed those men, and savagely at that, then he must hang. Justice concerns us this voyage as much as your secret policy, Kelly. If Pilgrim did not kill those men, and we hang him, then the pressure upon Finn will crack his mouth. Even if Finn be so cold and unmoved to confess, at least fear might chafe his neck.'

Cleasby's plans chilled me, and I asked ‘Sir, did not the Admiralty request we find and detain Finn and return him to England for trial on piracy?'

Cleasby said, ‘Aye. But the orders say naught of what to do with Pilgrim.'

I spent what time I could then with Finn, coaxing and teasing out the story, coming down over and over to the prize, the prize, the prize, assuring Finn that once we had the prize we might depart. Finn stared at me as if I was mad and asked why she should be so eager to return to England. I told her a fatted calf might be waiting for us, but she did not recognize this reference. I finally reached Finn by saying, ‘You possess abilities and talents much desired by your former master, a certain cunning and a capacity for disguise
.
Your recent actions on
Kindly One
only increase your value. The knack to kill he considers useful. I am to bring you greeting from the far-marked man.'

She flinched and cursed at that. Then she asked ‘If I give you the truth of the prize, will you plaindeal with me?'

I told Finn I could promise nothing, but I would hear the proposal.

She met my eyes and said, ‘Let Pilgrim go. Take me back to England, to Runciman – tis him, then? One wandering eye? Let Pilgrim go, for he's done naught wrong, naught, and I shall show you the prize you seek and then turn it over into Runciman's own hands and return, I suppose, to Runciman's work.'

I knew not if the little discretion Runciman had afforded me covered such pacts, and Captain Cleasby had already ordered the boatswain to tie a noose, but I knew not what else to do. And there remained the troublesome matter of murders. So I asked, ‘Who killed the men on board
Kindly One
?'

‘I did, you fool' said Finn easily, almost absently, ‘though I only intended the one.'

I reported to Cleasby that Matt Finn also confessed to the murders. Cleasby gazed steadily at the wall opposite, finally saying, ‘I cannot hang Finn without the gold. Are you not the officer of the watch, sir?'

On deck, I prayed. I stood very still, officer, agent, pawn.

Heaviness everywhere, settling on us, pushing us forward, frightening some, pleasing others. At this, the butt-end of a long chase, some climax now, some release, sweet anticipation of whatever relief might come from seeing a man die. It darted from officer to officer, man to man, like light in the rigging at night.

Captain Cleasby came on deck with Finn under guard and installed the prisoner under my care. Then he surveyed the boatswain's work for the yardarm. Pilgrim and Finn had still not been permitted to speak together, and I had not been able to speak to either of them, Cleasby keeping me busy with choosing a dozen men for the hanging party. I tripped in a sloppy coil of line and bawled out the boatswain, who in turned called back to me an apology, adding he ‘be a mite busy this morning, sir, with other rigging.' I went below as if to cool my temper. Cleasby did not call me back. So I descended to the hold, where Edward Seward and Con Pilgrim sat, in dampness and in irons.

Seward came near the grate immediately, fetters dragging, telling Pilgrim he heard the key. Pilgrim looked up at me slowly when I knelt at the grate and called down his name. He'd not slept, predictably, nor had he eaten. His fair beard coming in gave him sunken cheeks. ‘Pilgrim,' I said, ‘Captain Cleasby will hang you for your confession, but you and I know it is false.'

‘If your captain wills to hang me, then your captain will hang me
,'
said Pilgrim as he shifted a little against the irons. ‘There be naught I can do about that.'

‘Recant, you stubborn ass!' I knew excitement would only seal Pilgrim's will, but I could no longer speak quietly. ‘This is no easy death, Pilgrim. Do you know how long a hanging takes? What is it that makes you willing to die for Finn?'

Pilgrim stared at something I could not see. ‘Willing to die?

No, sir. My will means naught in this place, at this moment. But someone must die for
Kindly One
. And Finn be not responsible.'

I discarded discretion and told Pilgrim that Cleasby would hang him to force something else from Finn.

Pilgrim's absence of concern may have come from fatigue, strain or some detachment I could not sound
.
He said, ‘Your captain will get naught from mine that my captain does not wish to give. If I recant now, your captain will be forced to hang my captain, and what prize will be got then?'

A quick despair revealed itself in Pilgrim's face; he fought it down.

I wanted to shake him. ‘Damn my captain! Damn the prize!

Are you not afraid to die, man?'

‘I should not be.'

I knew then I'd interrupted something private. I wished to say one last thing to him – words that meant something. I managed ‘God have mercy on your soul.'

Pilgrim answered me: ‘And on yours.'

I returned above, Seward's pleas for freedom scattering behind me.

Disputing with Cleasby might be useless, but I did dispute. He tried refusing me entry to his cabin, but I entered, speaking quickly now. He ordered me to the sickbay, citing my cough, my leaking nose, but I would not go until he heard my plea for Pilgrim. I spoke to Cleasby's back until he turned and said, ‘Your mouth flaps like a loose sheet. Need I clew it up? Make no mistake, I can put you below the rest of this voyage, in the same irons now on Seward and Pilgrim. I can justify this to the Admiralty as insubordination. Your orders be damned, Lieutenant Kelly, for no matter whom you serve, you remain but the first lieutenant. And I remain captain.

Now. I just ordered you to the sickbay. Why stand you here?'

In the sickbay, Dr Pollard gave me rum and I-told-you-so, as well as bitter dry leaf to chew, and he must have guided me into a hammock, because there he woke me some hours later,
Dauntless
gone oddly quiet. Lieutenant Penney stood in the suddenly distant sickbay door, piping my name. When had
Dauntless
bloated out so? The moment my fever stoked, that is when.

I managed to get on deck, which wavered before me. I took my place and stood as steadily as I might.

All men, officers, idlers and prisoners stood where they must, for now not even Captain Cleasby could stop what he had set in motion. I caught Pollard's eye and thought again of his talk of rods and orbits and spheres. Pilgrim stood, hands bound behind him, watching the boatswain bind his feet. He balanced with some difficulty, and a fine trembling took him. The boatswain fixed the noose at his neck, and Pilgrim shut his eyes. The order given –
Handsomely, handsomely
– the men in the hanging party hauled in silence. Pilgrim struggled, a spasm waving from his head to his feet, lashed through him by the force of many arms and one rope against his breath. And Finn watched, utterly silent. The wind gusted a bit, and Pilgrim looked down past his own feet at us. Then, as he twisted, he looked on wrecked
Kittiwayke
, then he twisted again and looked on us once more. I know not how long he saw us, or when the red and black came over his sight, for I could not point to the moment he died. He'd calmed, but now he shook himself as though throwing off a coat. Eyes open and bulging, neck stretched, his face flushed red, purple, blue: the man became a bruise. A great release blew through us, sickness following in me.

Then Finn accused us of hanging an innocent. She promised she'd see me drown for this, and I tried to explain that Runciman commanded us both.

Cleasby, much red in the face, strode towards us and jerked Finn round, giving insult and demanding prize. Finn told him once more the only possession of value sat trapped on the rocks. Cleasby ordered me back to
Kittiwayke
to find the hidden gold. Finn smirked. I'd no choice but to go, for even if I refused and there risked insubordination, cowardice and arrest, he would send someone else, he would risk another for gold that was not there, and I would not, could not, allow another man's life to be risked for this fable.

Gulls cried, attracted to the yardarm. Finn mumbled about gold and mouths.

As I stepped away from Cleasby, readying myself to follow orders, Finn spoke again, but in different tones. ‘Kelly, no. Captain Cleasby, I appeal to your good sense and your conscience. Surfeit.

Please, sir, send no one over. Enough death. There be no gold.

Please.'

Captain Cleasby had walked away, too, and my last glance at Finn as I readied to swing over was of a little body nearly lost within a greatcoat.