Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key (8 page)

“What’s that mean?”

“Pardon me, sir, but the disgraceful behavior of Mrs. Waverly cannot have escaped your notice,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Why, I happed upon her yestereen in Captain Reynald’s arms, when I went up to relieve myself at moonrise.”

“Oh,” said John, surprised to feel a throb of jealousy. “I didn’t mean that. I know she’s been making sheep’s eyes at him. And he at her, come to that. I reckon she’s using her court-ways to get herself some more presents of emeralds. Much I care; like I told you, she’s only the widow of my mate at Panama. Nothing to me.”

“Then you are wise,” said Mr. Tudeley. “What did you mean, then?”

“About what? Oh. What’s a stylite?”

“A saint given to mortifying his flesh by living atop a high pillar,” Mr. Tudeley explained. “Abjuring any earthly pleasure, fasting and praying, and never setting foot on solid ground for years together. The simile is apt, I think.”

John decided not to ask him what a simile was. “Ah. Fancy that.”

The breeze changed its quarter and grew stronger suddenly, buffeting them. Its freshness had all gone; it was hot, like a wind out of an oven door. John turned his head to the east, out of which the wind had come. He watched the dirty smudge, and thought it looked as though it had spread up the sky a bit.

“Perhaps the Lord intended me to be a stylite,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Certainly I have not been destined for earthly happiness. God knows I have suffered constant mortification. 1 wonder whether that will mitigate in my favor, when I stand before the Throne of Judgment?”

“Maybe,” said John, feeling a prickle of sweat as the temperature went shooting up. Mr. Tudeley took out a filthy handkerchief, mopped his brow, and observed:

“There’s a sail over there.”

“What? Where?”

“That way.” Mr. Tudeley pointed. “Ought I to shout?”

“Aye! You’re the lookout.”

“Halllooo! I see a ship!”

“No, you stupid—Ahoy! Sail to larboard!”

“Well, that’s certainly set them to scurrying about like ants,” said Mr. Tudeley. He put his handkerchief away and unlooped a little bellarmine jug from his belt, in which he carried his rum ration. He uncorked it and had a thoughtful pull. “I suppose now we’ll assail some innocent vessel, slaughter her sailors, and take her cargo?”

“That’s the general idea,” said John uneasily. Both the stain on the sky and the unknown ship were moving quickly. The ship was now hull-up over the horizon and making straight for the
Harmony
, showing no inclination to evade her. Looking down, he saw Captain Reynald opening his spyglass to have a look at the strange vessel.

The captain regarded her in silence a long while, as gleeful men ran around him getting ready for the attack. They loaded small arms and piled them up, and brought up a coil of slow-match to portion out to the gunners. A whetstone was passed from hand to hand, as men put edges on their blades and boarding axes.

Captain Reynald closed up his glass with a snap. “Belay! We run, gentlemen. We are foxes, but they are wolves. Make the sail!”

“What d’you mean?” John heard Anslow demanding. Captain Reynald held out his spyglass with an ironical expression. Anslow stepped into view from where he’d been obscured by the mainsail and took it to see for himself. John saw him peering out at the oncoming stranger. John turned round and looked hard. He was young then and his eyes were sharp; he could just make out the tricolored flag.

“Oh bugger,” he said. “It’s a bloody Dutchman.”

“Is it?” Mr. Tudeley had another drink of rum. “Have they anything we want?”

“A lot of guns, by the look of her,” said John unhappily. Men were scrambling up into the
Harmony
’s rigging as fast as they could go to let out sail, and the little
Fraternity
had already changed course and was skipping away like a hare.

“One side!” shouted a topman, shoving past John to run out on the yard.

“Guns,” said Mr. Tudeley in a meditative voice. “That would be cannons, am I correct?”

“Aye.”

“Of which we have only that swivel gun on the rail?”

“Aye.”

“Seems rather an oversight on Captain Reynald’s part, doesn’t it?”

“I reckon he’s been counting on speed and the sharpshooters, like he done when he took us,” said John. The Dutchman still came on, bearing down on the
Harmony
; who spread her full compliment of sail at last and, tacking, took off after the
Fraternity
. Mr. Tudeley clutched the mast, closed his eyes and swore under his breath as they came about. John gripped hard on the topmast shrouds as they swung through the full arc, too busy looking back at the Dutchman to mind the sway.

She seemed too orderly and clean for a pirate, but there was a lean hungry look to her that didn’t square with John’s notions of a Dutch West India ship. Clearly she meant to give chase, though; for she was unfurling more of her canvas and swinging her bow to follow the
Harmony
.

The
Harmony
raced ahead, not letting her close the distance. The wind was hot as though it blew out of Hell now, screaming in the shrouds and stays. John’s hair whipped his face like wire and he turned away, but not before he saw the puff of smoke from the Dutchman’s larboard bow gun. A moment later he heard the
boom
, and saw the white fountain leap up in the
Harmony
’s wake.

“Damn,” said John. “She’s getting our range.”

“I expect we’re doomed, then,” said Mr. Tudeley in a dull voice. He still had his eyes screwed tight shut.

“Maybe not,” said John, “Maybe not. All them guns ain’t half heavy. We’re lighter and God knows we can run.”

Mr. Tudeley made no reply, but groped for his jug and drank more rum.

The
Fraternity
ran, and the
Harmony
ran, and the Dutchman pursued them hard, though she seemed unable to close within range for her shots to count for anything. She left off shooting after awhile and just came on, grim and silent as a mastiff. She never tried to hail them; she never ran up any other colors.

“What do you suppose they want?” asked Mr. Tudeley, finishing his rum.

“Could be hunting pirates,” said John. “Just to kill us. Could be scavenging for what they can get. No way to tell ’em we haven’t got anything worth taking just now, though, if that’s the case.” He glanced over his shoulder and saw, with a shock, that the discoloration on the sky was now overarching, as though they had sped backward across the curve of the world. The sea was greened copper. The air was hot as a furnace.

John looked down and saw Mrs. Waverly standing in the companionway, watching Captain Reynald as he paced to and fro. Sejanus was at the rail with three or four others staring back at the Dutchman. John blinked and stared, and rubbed his eyes and stared again. There was another black, or at least a mulatto, standing beside Sejanus. He wore the clothes of a common sailor, and was watching not the Dutchman but Sejanus himself, who seemed to be taking no notice of him.

Captain Reynald went to the companionway and crouched down, saying something to Mrs. Waverly. She smiled bravely and said something back. He looked over his shoulder and then kissed her. John felt a knot in his heart, but he turned away.
Nothing to me,
he told himself.

The sea was rising. They could look out on the long swell, mountains of water rolling skyward. The
Fraternity
disappeared and reappeared, behind one mountain and the next. The Dutchman kept on after them like a charging bull, but even she seemed to labor now in the troughs of the waves. White water broke, and ran over the deck; John looked down again and saw Sejanus standing alone at the rail.

Mr. Tudeley said something, lifting a feeble arm to point to larboard, and John realized he had gone quite deaf for the shrieking of the wind. He looked where Mr. Tudeley was pointing and saw a dark coastline. He filled his lungs and bawled “Land ho! Land to starboard! Lee shore!”

He could hear his own voice at least, and it carried to the deck below. Captain Reynald’s head went up; he glanced to larboard and began screaming orders out, just as the first hot rain hit John in the face like a pailful of shot. He gasped and wiped his face, but the rain kept coming, in sheets, and all was gleaming-wet on board the
Harmony
now. Fearful he’d slip, John got down beside Mr. Tudeley and grabbed hold of the shrouds.

“Oughtn’t we to put into land?” cried Mr. Tudeley.

“No!” John yelled back. “We’d run aground and wreck!”

“Well, at least we’d be on dry land—”

“In little pieces!” John looked around for the
Fraternity
, but couldn’t make her out anywhere. Color had been drained away: the sea was white, the sky and driving water were white, beaten foam flying and spattering. He glanced behind then, shielding his face with one hand, and thought he saw the Dutchman ploughing nose-down into a wave. Then he was blinded, as the world erupted in a blast of purple-white light, and deafened as thunder clapped down on them like a physical blow.

When he raised his face, black rain-glistening figures were swarming all around, topmen leaving the rigging, seeming to flow like snakes down the sheets and shrouds. Dazedly he pulled at Mr. Tudeley’s shoulder.

“We got to get down!”

“No!” Mr. Tudeley clung like a limpet to his perch. “No!”

“We’ll get struck!”

“No!”

“I’m not staying!”

“No!”

Giving up, John groped over the edge for the futtock-shrouds and swung himself down. In his descent he was tilted far over one way, so that for a second he lay prone on the shrouds, and then so far the other way he was swung out in the air hanging on by his hands only, as his feet kicked the clouds of flying water. He expected any moment for Mr. Tudeley’s body to come hurtling past him, but it never happened. When his feet found the chains at last he peered up and glimpsed Mr. Tudeley up there still, silhouetted by a flash of lightning, screaming curses at God or Fate or the sea.

Waves warm as bathwater were breaking over the deck now, sheets of foam pocked by the relentless rain, and the high squealing wind was no less loud down on deck. John groped his way down from the chains and hung on to the rail. Sodden figures clung to anything standing, gasping for air as each wave receded, putting their heads down to endure the next that swept over them; he saw three men at the tiller, straining with bared teeth to steer a course, but he knew the
Harmony
must be driven ashore now. He looked around to see it he could make out the coastline, but another flash of lightning came.

When John opened his dazzled eyes he saw the rock, the only black and steady thing in that churning surging white nightmare. There it was to starboard. The
Harmony
seemed to dance round it. There it was to larboard, and then the
Harmony
struck, with a sound louder than the thunder or the wind, the loudest sound John had ever heard in his life, the rending splintering crunch that meant it was over.

He was choking under water in the scuppers. He rolled over into air, peering up the deck which sloped above him steep as a mountainside. He began to scale it, hand over hand, past other soaked and struggling men. A wave the size of a house came over them, scouring down the deck. John caught hold of the edge of the companionway and held on. When he came up for air and drank in breath, he found himself staring into Mrs. Waverly’s gray eyes. Her face was white, her hair down around her shoulders, streaming like amber seaweed.

“I will not die in there,” she said, inaudibly but John read her lips. She looked beyond him and John turned to see what she was staring at.

Sejanus and the mulatto were working at the ship’s boat, unlashing it from its cradle. No one was attempting to stop them, or help them; every man left on deck was making his slow determined way hand over hand to the companionway, shoving past Mrs. Waverly as they flopped inside.

“Anslow!” roared John, as Anslow slid past him. “The boat!”

Anslow shook his head, with a sick grin. “The rum,” he said, and vanished below, to get as drunk as he might before the sea got him. Mrs. Waverly screamed and John half-rolled to see another wave coming at the
Harmony
, charging at her bows, spume high as a cathedral, a white cliff looming. It took forever to break, but when it did it lifted the bow of the Harmony, tilting her on her beam-end before dropping her with a crash as it flooded over the deck. Sejanus, the mulatto and the boat all vanished in a confusion of shattered water and noise; John looked up and saw the prow of the boat coming at him. He grabbed it and shoved it away. The water receded and the
Harmony
settled again with a grinding lurch. The boat lay in the scuppers with Sejanus rolling in it. He looked stunned, struggled feebly.

Mrs. Waverly pushed herself from the companionway and slid down the deck to the boat. John let go and slid after her. He could hear planks splitting now, and a crack as the fore topmast broke and came crashing down, trailing all its rope and blocks. Mrs. Waverly scrambled nimbly over the gunwale into the boat and John hauled himself in after her. He lay there exhausted a moment, looking at her wet bare legs. She screamed again but the wave broke before he could raise his head to see it, a ton of white water smothering and blinding him, and he felt the boat pitch as the wave sluiced it clean off the deck and into the sea.

The motion changed at once. John opened his eyes and found the boat swamped and wallowing. Mrs. Waverly and Sejanus had risen to their knees and were baling with their cupped hands. John followed their example, there under the high black shadow of the
Harmony
. The oars had gone; he saw one floating away, nearly close enough to reach but not without pitching himself out of the boat. A bucket did go bobbing by and Sejanus was able to grab it, and resumed baling.

Another sharp crack, and a rending noise. John glanced over his shoulder and saw the
Harmony
’s mainmast going over, falling toward them. It seemed to be shrieking as it came. John spotted Mr. Tudeley, clinging until the impact of the fall shook him loose like an insect. He dropped into the water and sank. A moment later his bellarmine jug, and then his head, broke the surface and he was yowling and spitting, flailing in the water. John and Sejanus put out their hands and hauled him into the boat. He sat huddled on a thwart, shivering, glaring at them.