Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key (13 page)

“The Grand Turk looks them over and he’s seen men aplenty, but never seen no cat afore, in boots or out of ’em. He says, ‘Tell my fellow prince I’m sorry to say it, but we’ve fallen on hard times here on account of all these rats, and I can’t spare a ship nor any men to crew her.’

“Well! Puss grins, like a cat will, and says ‘I can fix your rats, oh Grand Turk. Just you make my master the King comfortable, and I’ll go out and have a word with ’em for you, shall I?’

“And he goes out and grins at the rats and says, ‘Right, my lads, you’re for it.’ And he sets about killing, and the ones as isn’t murdered straight away runs off so far they’re never seen again. He bites the heads off a round dozen or so and lugs ’em in by the whiskers, and says: ‘I reckon this lot won’t be troubling you any more, oh Grand Turk.’

“The Grand Turk’s mighty pleased at that, and says: ‘My fine fellow, are there other creatures like you in England?’ Puss bows low and he says, ‘Why, yes, there are a few of us. We only work for the very finest lords and ladies, though.’

“Grand Turk says, ‘How much would one of your lords or ladies ask, to sell such wonderful rat-killers?’

“Puss, he says ‘Oh, I don’t know if they’d sell one of us for less than a dozen chests of treasure. But, of course, you wouldn’t want just one; you’d want a gentlemen cat and a lady cat too, you see? And that way you’d soon be raising your own. So I would say twenty-five chests of treasure, on account of the ladies always cost more.’

“Grand Turk says, ‘Then I will load my best galley with presents for your King of England, and send him home in rare fashion. And I will put in twenty-five chests of treasure too, and when he gets back, he will surely send me a pair of rat-killers.’

“Puss bows low and says, ‘To be sure, Mr. Grand Turk, that he will.’

“So it was done. And Dick Whittington got home with his fortune made, and the heathen sailors was all pressed by the Navy so they couldn’t go back and tell no tales. And Puss lived like a Grand Turk himself the rest of his days, with all the cream he could drink, and all the fish he could eat.”

“Did you learn that story at your mother’s knee?” demanded Mr. Tudeley, scandalized.

“Some of it,” said John. “I made up bits where I didn’t remember. It’s only a fairy-story anyhow.”

“It had no morally instructive value whatever, I am afraid,” said Mrs. Waverly, with a solemn face.

“Chah! Like enough the cat would get his hat and boots, and sweet cream the rest of his days,” said Sejanus, with a sneer. He dipped himself another coconut-shellful of rum, and drank. “But I doubt he’d do anything for the boy in return. I’d say the boy worked to the end of
his
days keeping the cat happy.”

“Like enough,” said John, with a chuckle.

“You never want to give them what they ask for,” muttered Sejanus, taking another drink. “Because, see, then you believe in them. And that’s like chains on your reason. Good blacksmith can take shackles off your legs, but nobody can take off the other kind. And you put them on yourself. That’s the worst of it.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Tudeley.

“I am a free man,” said Sejanus, raising his voice. “And I intend to stay that way, you hear?”

“Maybe you had enough rum for tonight, mate,” said John, right before Mrs. Waverly screamed.

John sat bolt upright and almost screamed himself. Out at the edge of the firelight, just beyond the little palisado fence they had put up, stood a dead man.

It was the black they had found staring up from the rock pool, the one they had buried a good six feet down on the beach. He was dripping wet, with sand in his hair. He did not stare empty-eyed now; he gazed straight at Sejanus, looking sullen and resentful.

Sejanus turned and saw him, and leaped to his feet, spilling his rum. The dead man raised his arm and held out his hand, like someone asking for payment.

Sejanus turned his back. “No!” he said fiercely. “Don’t look at him, don’t think about him. You!” He grabbed Mr. Tudeley, who was staring at the dead man with his eyes standing out of his head. “Look at me! We’re reasoning men, aren’t we? No damn superstitions. You don’t see anything there!”

“But—but, sir, I must say I do—” said Mr. Tudeley, in a kind of gobbling squawk.

“No, you don’t!” Sejanus lifted him bodily and turned him toward the fire. “Nobody does! Look at the fire instead. You, too!” he added to Mrs. Waverly and John. “There’s no haunts. Nothing there in the dark. Close your eyes if you’re scared. Sing!”

He smacked the side of John’s head and John, keeping his eyes resolutely on the fire, began: “
Taking his beer with old Anacharsis…
”

They sang it three times through, with Mrs. Waverly joining in as well, though her voice trembled and she gripped John’s hand fair to break his fingers.

When they fell silent at last, John dared to look up at the palisadoes and saw nothing there. Sejanus grabbed a burning branch from the fire and scrambled to his feet. He went to the palisadoes and stared out at the night, holding the torch high.

“There is
nothing
there!” he shouted, and flung the branch. And nothing answered him; there was only the sound of the wind in the palm trees, and the soft boom and crash of the surf.

BY THE BROAD LIGHT of day it seemed best to pretend nothing strange had ever happened, though John got up early and went limping out on his crutch to look at the sand on the other side of the palisadoes. There were no footsteps there, nor any ghastly trail leading up from the black’s burying-place. A couple more corpses from the wreck had washed up on the shore in the night, to be sure, and the sharks had been at them, so John took an oar and went down on his knees to dig graves for them. He was getting so used to dead men by now, though, he might have been a householder in London sweeping down his front step.

With John able to totter about, they set to building the pinnace. Sejanus seemed to want to throw himself into hard work, and his momentum carried the others along. They labored in the sun, sweating to drag timbers from the wreck; it was a long weary business sawing a keel from the biggest beam, and they were obliged to dive the wrecks again to get enough hull-planking, though the sharks came eagerly to see what they were doing.

In the end they made a sort of grenade with some of the gunpowder in a coconut-shell. They set it smoldering and shut it quick in a weighted barrel, and dropped it over the side of the boat above the wreck, rowing away like hell. Mrs. Waverly’s saltpeter proved to work admirably; there was a belch of white water and the sea above the wreck foamed like a kettle on the boil. A great deal of planking floated ashore after that.

Unfortunately more dead men washed up too, pretty far gone now, disturbed by the concussion. They went into one mass grave, pitched in without ceremony, nothing more than nuisances now.

The living changed too. The men shaved at intervals, to keep their faces cooler, but the work stained and the sun bleached what they wore, and nobody bothered with stockings or shoes. Mr. Tudeley plaited himself a straw hat from palm fronds, which gave him a rakish look. Mrs. Waverly was very particular about washing and keeping her hair combed out fine, but she did persist in wearing nothing but a shift, and nothing under it as far as anyone could tell. And though she continued affectionate with John, she kept a prim distance from him by night, sleeping in her own little bower rigged up under a canvas sunshade.

John was too weary, after a day of hard work, to press for more. His restraint seemed to embolden Mr. Tudeley, who one day announced he was just going for a coconut.

“Either of you fellows care for one? I’ve a damned perishing thirst.” he said, elaborately casual.

Sejanus, busy planing a length of broken plank into a rudder for the pinnace, merely grunted his refusal. “Aye, thank’ee,” said John, who was hobbling back and forth in the sun like a donkey, dragging planks and beams from their lumber pile.

They worked on a while. At last John stopped, wiped his face on his sleeve and glared at the little heap of pegs Mr. Tudeley had been set to whittle.

“Where’s he got to, anyhow?”

“I reckon it’s all the fresh air,” said Sejanus cryptically, as he worked.

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t you notice? He’s been using the word
damn
all morning. Damn this, damn that, damn hot sun, damn wet wood. Did a lot of talking about damned Society and its damned restraints. Must be feeling powerful manly today.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I’d like my God-damned coconut,” said John. Sejanus snickered.

“I reckon he would too.”

“I’ll go get it myself, then,” said John, and started up the sand dune. As he came limping over the top he met Mr. Tudeley staggering back. Mr. Tudeley’s spectacles hung under his chin; one lens had been broken, and he had a split lip.

“Where’s my coconut? And what happened to you?” John demanded.

“Oh! I just thought I’d…see if there were fresher coconuts on the tree, you know, and I made to climb one, and, er, fell,” said Mr. Tudeley, pulling his straw hat down in a vain attempt to shade his face. He had lost another tooth, too. “Terribly sorry.”

He wobbled on past John, who watched him go and then hastened back to camp. There he found Mrs. Waverly apparently serene and untroubled, though her color was a little high. She was weaving strips of rags into cord to make slow-match, the very picture of a thrifty housewife.

“Is all well?” John asked. She looked up at him and smiled.

“Why, of course, Mr. James. What do you lack?”

“I was only thirsty, is all.”

“Ah!” She rose and, taking a cutlass, neatly whacked the top from one of the coconuts in their makeshift larder. “Allow me.” She presented John with the coconut. He drank from it, thanked her, and went back to work.

As he stood looking down at the beach, John saw a line of cloud advancing over the sea, far off to the east, the same dirty coppery color as he’d noticed the morning of the storm. “Bugger,” he muttered, and hurried down to the others. Sejanus had paused work to pick the broken glass out of Mr. Tudeley’s spectacles. As John approached he was tying a loop through the empty half of the frame.

“There you are,” he said, fastening it through Mr. Tudeley’s buttonhole. “It’ll dangle there and you can just hold it up to your eye when you want to look at something close.”

“Not that I waste much time reading nowadays,” said Mr. Tudeley, with a sigh.

“Look out there,” said John, pointing at the horizon. They looked.

“Oh, hell,” said Sejanus.

They spent the rest of the afternoon dragging everything they had salvaged up from the beach, and the half-finished pinnace and the boat too, as close to the center of the island as they could haul them. The clouds advanced smoothly, relentlessly, and the heat came with them. John thanked God he was safe on dry land this time.

They battened down, stowing the powderkegs under several thicknesses of canvas, and rigged a shelter with barrels and the overturned boat, for when the rain came; and yet, as the hours went by and the skittering hot wind fanned their faces, no rain fell. The sea rose and began to break on the reef with a sound like cannon fire.

“Maybe it’ll miss us,” said John, at sunset, looking at the red sky in the west. Sejanus shrugged.

They ate hastily of a kind of stew of salt beef and coconut water, and sat around the fire watching as night fell. All to the east and north there were flashes of lightning but an eerie lack of thunder. The wind dropped off suddenly. John, looking up at the black starless sky, felt he might as well have been in a room indoors.

“I wish it would break,” said Mr. Tudeley, mopping his forehead. “The air’s stifling.”

Mrs. Waverly, who had risen to open a coconut for herself (she being disinclined to drink rum like the others) cried out suddenly. “Oh, the sea!”

The others jumped to their feet. Looking out over the palisadoes they could see the waves breaking in green fire. “Great God!” cried Mr. Tudeley.

“That’s just, what d’you call it, that’s just a red tide,” said John. “Phosphorescence.”

“What makes it?” demanded Sejanus. John shrugged.

“Seen it in a ship’s wake plenty of times,” he said. “Maybe it’s something rotten in the water, same as tree stumps when they shine in the dark. Nothing to be scared of.”

“Do you think it’s all the drowned men?” asked Mrs. Waverly in a shaky voice.

“Suppose so,” said John.

A flash of lightning came then, a flare of violet fire that ran across the sky. A long forked chain stabbed down into the sea; John could imagine the water boiling to steam where it struck, and cooked fish floating to the surface from five fathoms below.

“Storm’s getting closer,” said Sejanus. “Maybe we’d best—”

Another flash came, so close the branched lightning looked thick as a man’s arm, white-hot as the sun’s heart, with a shattering boom of thunder. John could have sworn he felt its heat scorching his face. For a second he was blind, but for the afterimage dancing in his eyes. His heart contracted with the fear that he had just seen something out at sea, briefly illuminated in the flash. Had there been masts and spars? Was some other luckless mariner out there in the night?

“Did anyone see—” began Mrs. Waverly, before the next flash came. There was a noise like a bomb rolling across the floor of heaven and then it exploded, with a roar that knocked them down. John found himself groveling in the sand at the base of the palisadoes, feeling with his fingers to be certain his eyes hadn’t been burned out of his head.

“Oh, no, no, no—” Mrs. Waverly moaned. John struggled to his feet, using his crutch, and she seized his arm. “Why would anyone go to sea—”

There was a ship, black and gleaming with rain. He could see her clearly now. The green flame in the water swept her deck and ran from her every line and spar.
Saint Elmo’s Fire,
thought John, and tried to tell Mrs. Waverly that was all it was, but his words were lost in the next crash of thunder. Yet after all it wasn’t the ship glowing with phosphorescence that was the horror, it wasn’t that her sails were rags and still carried her before the wind with sickening speed; it was that she was being driven straight for the rock that had broken the
Harmony
’s back.