Shark Island (23 page)

“So what happened after you arrived here?”

“That
couyon,
Joel Hammond, he sailed the schooner over a rock, so she got a hole in her bottom. There was a great fuss with canvas and ropes as the men tried to stop the leak, and then Ezekiel came back from shore rubbing his hands together, and after that he drank a great deal of brandy.”

Remembering something Forsythe had said, Wiki checked, “As if he were celebrating?”

“And as if he were angry, too. He was pleased about finding the wreck, but furious when he found that the
Annawan
was no longer fit to go to sea. Every now and then he said he would send for one of his captains to come to the rescue, but mostly he was too drunk for anyone to guess what was going on in his head. I did not know until I came on voyage how much my husband drank. He was a different person at home. At home he was generous and attentive. At sea he was so … so unloving.”

She leaned closer, so that Wiki was suddenly aware of her scent. The movement lifted her breasts in the confines of her low bodice.

She said, “You have asked me four questions, and I have only asked you two.”

Wiki thought back, and realized she was right, so he waited.

“So why did you come on deck … the way you did this morning?”

“I'd been swimming.”

“But—
met tes fesse a l'aire?
”

“I prefer to swim naked—and that's two questions,” he said.

She bridled. “Perhaps you think it is clever to come out of the water like some kind of—of primitive sea god.”

He smiled wryly, and said, “No insult was intended.”

“But your buttocks are tattooed! In—in great, bold spirals. Is that the custom in your country?”

He thought about it. “In my
iwi
—my tribe,” he corrected.

“So you have been back to your home since you saw me last?”

“Oh aye,” he said. Getting home had been his chief aim after he and George Rochester had run away from the college in Dartmouth. He'd shipped on a whaleship because that was the most direct way of getting to the Bay of Islands. When the ship had sailed in the wrong direction, he had solved the problem by deserting at the next landfall and joining another ship that was going the right way. “I've been back twice,” he said.

“And your people were glad to see you?”

“Of course. I had many wonderful tales to tell,” he said dryly. “And because of that I was a person of importance.”

“And you got your—
tes fesses
—tattooed.” She leaned forward again and whispered, “Did it hurt?”

It had hurt like hell. On other islands in the Pacific, tattoos were tapped into the surface of the skin with special combs, which was painful enough, but in New Zealand the patterns were carved with a chisel as if the living flesh were wood. By the time his buttocks had healed, sitting down had become an unaccustomed luxury.

However, Wiki merely smiled, and said, “Do you realize how many more questions you have asked of me than I have asked of you?”

“Those don't count, because you never answered the first question properly.”

“Which one was that?”

“Why did you rush up the side of the ship onto the deck?”

“Because I was attacked by a shark.”

“A
shark?
” For a moment he thought she would dash up to deck and go to the rail, like her cousin, and he said, “It's gone.” Then he leaned forward, coming closer, breathing in her scent, resting his forearms along his thighs as he watched the subtle changes in her expression, and said, “Now it's my turn.”

She pouted, and waited.

“How did the parrot get burned?”

“It was an accident. It flew into the cabin stove all by itself.”

“It escaped from its cage?”

“No, I took it out. I opened the door and grabbed it.”

“But why?”

She exclaimed passionately, “You told me that Ezekiel's ghost was in a bird, and I knew it was
that
bird—and I couldn't bear it. Can you even start to imagine what it was like? Once, that bird was my special pet, but now every time the poor creature stirred on its perch I knew it was possessed!”

Dear God,
thought Wiki, what nightmares had he inadvertently triggered?

He said, wincing, “So what did you do?”

“I took it out of the cage to take it on deck and throw it over the railing—but it escaped; it struggled away from me, and flew into the fire. It fell to the floor and I thought it was dead. But it started floundering about—it was horrible,
horrible!
I heard Robert Festin killing hens for dinner—and when I looked he was chopping off their heads, so I wished him to chop off the parrot's head, too, because it had to be put out of its terrible pain. He will cook it with tomorrow's stew—and why not? Those
couyons
of sailors won't notice it.”

Wiki grimaced. Then he said, “Did Captain Rochester tell you about Passed Midshipman Kingman?”

She looked puzzled. “That horrid skinny man who made that very crude joke about the convent where I was educated? What should I know about him?”

“He was murdered the night of the wake.”

“Murdered?”

“Aye—and the last anyone saw of him, he was staggering toward the after house.”

“
What?
But why would he come here?”

Her voice had become shrill, verging on hysteria, so he said in a more gentle tone, “He knew that you had supplied the liquor for the spree, so maybe he wanted more. If he did come in here, though, you might have been the last person to see him alive.”

“But I tell you I didn't see him!” she cried.

“Perhaps he wanted to see Alphabet?”

She blinked, looking confused, and demanded, “Who told you Alphabet was here?”

Wiki felt puzzled. “He did—Alphabet did. He said he slept in Ezekiel's stateroom because you were so upset.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, blinking hard as if more tears were threatening. “He gave me his arm to escort me, yes, when I came back after the prayers, and I was crying, of course, but I don't know why he told you that; he went off with the boat that took your officers to the beach, I think, and after I had finished crying I slept remarkably well.”

“So you didn't hear anything unusual?” he asked.

She frowned, and said, “I heard the boat being lowered, and after that it was quiet. I went to sleep, but then I was woken by a bump against the wall.”

“A bump?”

“Yes. Just one bump, and maybe I heard footsteps, too. Later, I was woken again by a splash—or maybe it was the boat returning—and then I went back to sleep and did not wake up until morning.”

“A bump?” Wiki looked around. “In here?”

“No, no. Outside, on the deck—up there.”

He stood up and headed for the stairs, hearing the rustle of skirts as Annabelle hurried after him. When they arrived on deck, he looked at her queryingly, and she pointed toward the larboard side of the after house.

He strode around the corner. Sun bounced up from the rippling water, forcing him to squint, and it was hot in the sheltered space between the wall of the after house and the larboard rail. He turned as Annabelle came up alongside him, and she said, “The noise came from here. A bump, and sometime after that, a splash.”

Wiki looked down, and his heart seemed to freeze. Though someone had tried to scrub it away, there was a wide, dark stain on the planks.

Twenty-six

When Wiki returned to deck, George was still standing by the wreck, and so he dived over the rail and swam to the beach. As he walked out of the surf, Rochester came to meet him. For some moments his friend said nothing, instead frowning and watching assessingly as Wiki took off his shirt and trousers, wrung them out, and put them on again.

Then he said, “Are you all right?”

“Aye,” said Wiki. As a matter of fact, he felt magnificent.

“You weren't worried about sharks?”

Wiki blinked, and turned and looked at the sparkling stretch of water he'd just swum across. The thought of shark attack hadn't even occurred to him.

Rochester gave up waiting for an answer, and led the way to the wreck, which looked different, Forsythe and his men having taken away a great deal of the cordage. Feeling awkward because of the odd quality of George's silence, Wiki said, “Thank you for establishing my credentials—you must have done a good job on Joel Hammond, because he ordered his men to cooperate.”

“So what did you find out?”

“The cook was definitely in the galley at the time Ezekiel Reed was killed—and when I had a look around in there, I found that someone had burned some clothing in the fire. There was very little left, but enough to guess it was a bloodstained shirt.”

“Any particular kind of shirt?”

“All I could tell was that it had been one of those common blue and white striped ones that find a good market with seamen—though it did have an unusual deer horn button.”

Wiki dug around in his pocket and handed it to George, who turned it over in his fingers. Then he handed it back, and said, “So you reckon the man who killed Kingman got rid of his bloodstained shirt in the galley fire—because he was handy to the galley already?”

Wiki hesitated, and then said quietly, “Zachary Kingman wasn't killed at the back of the galley, as I'd thought—he was killed on the larboard side of the after house.”

Silently, without meeting George's penetrating stare, he remembered the bloodstain on the planks at the sheltered side of the after house. His vision had grayed, and Annabelle had taken hold of him because she thought he was going to faint. He remembered the grip of her hands, and how she had hurried him back to the after house; he remembered her shutting the door to her stateroom, and how she had trembled as she explored the texture of his spiral tattoos. She had been frantic for him; what happened had been unstoppable.

George prompted in his clear, cut-glass accents, “How did you find that out?”

Abruptly brought back to the present, Wiki said, “Pedro da Silva—the seaman who was aloft at the time Captain Reed was killed—was also aloft during the spree that followed the prayers. He said that after Hammond had given the order to take him to the beach, Kingman woke up and stumbled off to the after house, and so they took Forsythe, instead. Then I found a big stain on the planks on the larboard side of the deck.”

“But his body was anchored by the bow, you said.”

“The current must have dragged it there.” Wiki hesitated, looked around, lowered his voice, and said, “Where's Forsythe?”

“He and his men are up at the fort, sizing up those beams. Why?”

“Apparently he and Kingman had a quarrel during the spree; Kingman was cheating at cards, and Forsythe had to shake him around a bit before he would give back the money.”

Rochester whistled. “That's bad.”

“And da Silva saw someone on the quarterdeck just before Annabelle ran back into the after house and found her husband dead.”

“Did he recognize him?”

“No—but he described him as burly, and either very short or bent low down.”

“That fits a number of men as well as Forsythe.”

“Aye,” said Wiki. “The cook is short and squat, and the bo'sun's mate is heavyset.”

“What about Annabelle Reed? Does she still reckon that it was Forsythe she saw on the quarterdeck?”

Wiki was silent, realizing that he had completely forgotten to check. Acutely aware that Rochester's frown was deepening as he studied his face, Wiki turned away, pretending to contemplate the pleasant scene. In the uncomfortable silence gulls screeched, circling the afternoon sun. Then he saw that Forsythe was heading their way down the cliff.

Rochester set off to meet the lieutenant, but then abruptly stopped a dozen yards up the trail. When Wiki caught up with him, he was bent like a heron to look at the ground.

George straightened, and said, “Something has been dragged along this track.”

“Aye,” said Wiki. “I noticed those ruts the day of Reed's burial. I thought they might have been made by construction stones.”

“For the fort? They seem too recent for that. And do they lead upward or down?”

“I've no idea,” said Wiki, and crouched down to look. As expected, the marks in the dust and stone meant little. Shaking his head, he pushed himself to his feet.

The movement disturbed a bird. It burst out of the scrub and soared straight up into the sky, circling in the air directly above the patch where it had been roosting. When Wiki tipped up his head to follow it with his eyes, he was unsighted by the bright sun directly behind it, so that for an instant the bird was a black beckoning flicker against a kaleidoscope of color.

The circling bird cawed a challenge. Back home in New Zealand, it would have been a potent omen. With a fine disregard for snakes Wiki pushed through thorny bushes toward the place where the bird had risen, tripped on something, and nearly measured his length in the scrub. As the bird cawed again in the sky right above, he recovered his balance with a few running steps, and went back to see what had caught his foot.

It was a spar of timber, about five feet long and four inches in diameter, roughly rounded, evidently cast aside there when it had finished serving its purpose. Wiki picked it up, tested its weight and heft, and then whirled it around his shoulders, swinging it from hand to hand, closing and unclosing his fists as its balance shifted. It was a skill he thought he'd forgotten. For a moment memories of childhood days were as vivid as the sun and sand of Shark Island—he could almost hear the voice of the warrior elder who had coached the village boys in hand-to-hand combat, and see his fiercely handsome tattooed face.

“What's that?” said George.