Shark Island (31 page)

“But was the galley empty when he left it? That's what I'd like to know!” And Wiki shouted again, “Robert!” Still, there was no reply. The deck planks echoed as he strode over to the galley and looked in the door, It was empty. Frowning, he looked around, and said, “So where the hell is he?”

“Oh, for God's sake,” said Forsythe impatiently, and ran to the companionway door. Wiki could hear his boots thundering down the stairs as he hollered, “Festin! Festin! Come out from wherever you are, you sogerin' bugger!”

The echoes faded into silence. Wiki looked around, beset by the same sense of oncoming calamity he'd felt when his instincts had been trying to warn him that there was a shark in the water. Then he turned into the galley, looking for some hint of where Festin had gone. The fire was still hot, and there were chunks of salt meat simmering in two great caldrons on top of the stove. It was as if the Acadian had just stepped out the door.

Because of that instinctive sense of impending doom, Wiki reached up, plucked his
taiaha
off the two hooks where it rested, and then turned, looking out the doorway. Out of habit, he held the weapon at a slight diagonal across his body, the pointed tongue downward, and the killing blade uppermost. There was a slight sound from behind him—or behind the galley shed. He turned, and something in the grate caught his eye—scorched wood, and the dull gleam of hot metal. He hunkered down, putting his
taiaha
on the floor, and gingerly hauled it out of the embers. It was a skinning knife—and he was almost sure that it was the same long knife that he had plucked out of Kingman's dead thigh.

The memory of that awful moment when he had bent to cut the rope that held Kingman to the bottom of the sea and the shark had bulleted past was so vivid that the rush of brutal movement from behind seemed almost inevitable. A hard arm hooked around his neck, dragging back his chin, and he glimpsed the flash of a knife from the corner of his eye. Wiki felt just a touch of searing pain under his left ear before his knees flexed powerfully, straightening his legs. With one violent movement he threw himself backward on top of his assailant.

As the blade left his neck he rolled over, frantically grabbing about the floor for his
taiaha.
Meantime, his attacker came to his feet faster than seemed possible, both arms wide, one hand holding Forsythe's knife, the other gripping the knife Wiki had plucked from the grate. It was hot—Wiki could see the skin of Alphabet Green's hand whitening and crinkling where he held it, but Alphabet didn't seem to notice the pain. Instead, his glare was fixed on Wiki's face. Not a word was said. He charged at Wiki again, and again Wiki rolled away from the long knife, still groping for his
taiaha
but forced by another attack to roll away from it.

Then he was on his feet, crouched and weaponless. Green was between him and the doorway, his expression set in vicious triumph. He made another lunge with the long skinning knife. Wiki threw himself to one side, crashing against a wall. A huge fry pan fell down, distracting Alphabet for a critical instant, and Wiki flung himself the other way, snatching at his
taiaha.
The power of
Tumatauenga
surged into him with the touch of the wood.

Although he did not know it, Wiki's eyes were bulging from his head with fury, and he was grunting wordlessly, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” His tongue lolled out in contempt and defiance, matching the
arero,
the carved tongue of the
taiaha.
Alphabet's own eyes widened. The long knife slashed down hard. If it lodged in the wood, it could tear the
taiaha
out of Wiki's grip. He parried desperately, forced to hold the pole short. The blade slid down the toughened shaft almost all the way to his hands, then back again as he flipped and whisked it.

He jabbed again with the pointed end, hoping to force Alphabet out into the open air. Instead, Green stayed in front of the doorway, keeping him trapped in the limited space. He was thrusting at Wiki with the long skinning knife, while his other hand brandished Forsythe's blade ready for use. Wiki's only defense was to keep on the move. Dancing back and forth as far as the space would allow, he constantly jabbed with the tongued end of his weapon, hoping to trick Alphabet into the same mistake that Rochester had made the first time they had jousted—the assumption that the point was the lethal part of the weapon. Wiki had the advantage of height already—what he had to do was to fool Green into ducking under the business end.

He jerked the tongue upward, flicking the collar of hair and feathers across Alphabet's face. Green swayed back, and laughed aloud as he lunged forward and up. Wiki skipped back, wincing as he came up hard against the hot stove. To Green, he must have looked trapped. Wiki saw the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. He jabbed again at Green's face, his movements deliberately desperate. Snarling triumph, Green ducked under the point and lunged forward. Wiki sidestepped smartly, whisked the
taiaha
around, and crashed the
rau,
the striking blade, on Alphabet Green's lowered head.

For a long instant Green teetered. Wiki saw his staring eyes roll up until only the whites showed. Then, as the knives clattered loose, Green crashed to the floor like a poleaxed beast.

Forsythe emerged from the companionway door just as Wiki staggered out onto the deck. “There's no one down there,” he said. “Festin and Stoker must have gone on shore.” Tana and Sua had come on deck, too, but it was Forsythe who inquired, “What the hell was all that racket?”

“Alphabet—Alphabet Green. He must have come with the boat that fetched the breakfast, and stayed behind when they left,” Wiki gasped. He hadn't realized that the deadly battle had taken such a short time, or that he was panting with exertion. Sweat poured off him. He was trembling like a leaf. All at once he was aware of bleeding from his neck, but when he put up a shaking hand it was to find it was nothing life-threatening, just a deep nick.

“What?” Forsythe strode quickly to the galley and went in. After a short moment he came out again without saying a word.

Wiki took three steps to the rail and sucked in three huge breaths of fresh air. Then he turned and said more calmly, “He was lying in wait for me—behind the galley, I think. He'd already found the skinning knife—the one that … that was in Zachary Kingman's body—and had thrown it into the galley fire. Then, when I was hunkered down getting it out of the grate, he rushed me from behind, and damn near cut my throat with your knife.”

Forsythe scowled. “
My
knife?”

“Aye. If he'd killed me with that—
that
knife,
your
knife, and managed to get to shore before my body was found—with
your
knife,
that
knife—you would have been blamed, for sure.”

From Green's point of view it had been a perfect setup, Wiki thought. Forsythe had been shouting obscenities when he'd come on board, and was obviously in a savage mood. At any kind of trial Tana and Sua and the cutter's men would have testified that he'd been in the throes of one of his rages. His derisive opinion of Wiki was known throughout the fleet. Forsythe could have swung for his murder, and probably the other killings as well.

Wiki said grimly, “He was the unlisted seventeenth member of the complement of the
Annawan
—the unknown fifth man who was still on board the schooner when Captain Reed was knifed. I'd believed all along that Alphabet Green had been one of those who came to the
Swallow
when we first arrived in the bay—that he was just an ordinary member of the crew. Once I knew that he wasn't, it was obvious he was the killer.”

“But how the devil did he do it?”

“He was the man in the galley. I think we'll find when we ask Annabelle that that's why she went to the galley so often—it was their private meeting place. He was probably there when she left to take the bottle of brandy to her husband—but we'll have to ask her to make sure of that, too. Then, when Captain Reed threw her out of the cabin, she ran back to the galley because she expected him to be there still—but he was gone. He'd dropped through the hatchway to the steerage, and had made his way between decks to the after hatch.
He
was the man Annabelle and Pedro da Silva glimpsed on the quarterdeck, broad enough in the shoulders to be mistaken for you.”

“But what about Festin?” Forsythe demanded. “Where the hell was he? According to him,
he
was the one in the goddamned galley.”

“He was in the pantry. Boyd said he wasn't there, but it turns out that Boyd is very deaf. Alphabet Green forced Festin to say he was in the galley to give himself an alibi, and put me off the track.” Alphabet had browbeaten Festin right before his very own eyes, Wiki thought ruefully, and yet he hadn't noticed.

“And poor Zack?” Forsythe's voice rose. His eyes had gone flat and blank, just the way they had when he'd first heard that Zachary Kingman was dead. “Green killed Zack too?”

“Aye. Zachary Kingman made a fatal mistake by staggering to the after house, and Green grabbed his opportunity. He had your knife ready to hand, so it was a perfect chance to eliminate your alibi for Captain Reed's murder, and at the same time lay the blame for both killings on you. He was wearing one of Reed's shirts already, so his own clothes were saved from being spattered. When he put the bloodied shirt in the galley fire, he also went to the bo'sun's locker and exchanged your knife—the one he'd used to kill Zachary Kingman—for the knife that Joel Hammond had left there. At the same time, he took one of the grindstones and a length of rope, then carried them to the after house, tied the stone to Zachary Kingman's ankles, and dropped him overboard.”

Forsythe demanded, “But why did he kill Captain Reed in the first place?”

“You'll have to ask him that when he comes to,” Wiki said tiredly, and was startled to hear Forsythe's sardonic guffaw.

“You must be joking,” the big Virginian said.

“What do you mean?”

“That's quite a weapon of yours, Mr. Deputy Coffin. You should be proud of it. This bastard who killed Zack and done his best to kill you, too, is as dead as last week's mutton.”

Thirty-five

Another day, another burial, and another argument about who should conduct the service. Joel Hammond reckoned that Rochester should do it. Not only had he taken the service before, but he was the highest-ranking American there, he figured, and a representative of the U.S. Navy to boot. George pointed out that not only did he not feel like lauding a man who had murdered a brother navy officer, but this time Lieutenant Forsythe was in attendance, and it was a well-known fact that Lieutenant Forsythe outranked him when they were not on board the brig
Swallow.
Forsythe, for his part, delivered the information that there was no point in asking him, as he was only there for the satisfaction of seeing the dirt stamped down over the body of the man who had killed his best friend.

Then Lawrence J. Smith arrived and the fuss came to a sudden stop as he immediately claimed the right to conduct the service, being the most important person around. Then there was a long pause as he ruffled through a Bible for the most portentous passage possible, while the coffin lay in the open hole that had been dug next to Captain Reed's grave, under the same dusty tree.

For Wiki, the scene was startlingly reminiscent of the day of Ezekiel Reed's burial. The grave-digging party leaned on their shovels; the seamen who had come to witness the burial shuffled about in the hot sun; and Annabelle Reed wept into a handkerchief. He himself was keeping a tactful distance from the mourners, lingering about the fringes of the cemetery and contemplating headstones. Vaguely recollecting the crypt that had looked as if it had often been lifted to receive more coffins before being closed again, he hunted about until he found it. It had sunk even further, he noticed—it was even less level with the sward. When he put his weight on the big rectangular stone, it tipped so that he could see recently disturbed dirt where it had been lifted and then carefully set back in place. Then he saw scrapes in the pathway nearby which matched the ruts in the track up the cliff, and indentations where hoisting equipment had been lodged.

So this was where the crew of the sloop
Hero
had hidden the bullion, he thought in a strangely remote kind of way. He wondered rather ghoulishly how many skeletons they had uncovered while they were enlarging the hole beneath the slab, but otherwise he felt an almost complete lack of interest, because his mind was mostly taken up with wondering whether it was right that he should be there. After all, it was the funeral of a man he'd killed himself, something about which his feelings were muddled.

The killing had been in self-defense, but he had to keep on reassuring himself about that—which was crazy, because he realized now how close Alphabet had come to killing him that first day, when he had been testing the timbers in the hold. He remembered the strong smell of onions on the Cajun's breath; he remembered that he had felt threatened, even then. Then, Alphabet had relaxed, and stepped away—because he, Wiki, had confessed that when he was sixteen years old he'd been madly in love with Annabelle Green.

Wiki turned to another worry—Annabelle herself. She now behaved as if she hated him—as if she felt he had betrayed her. For hours she'd refused to speak to him, taking refuge in hysterics instead. Finally, however, she'd admitted that her cousin had indeed been in the galley when she had taken the bottle of brandy to the cabin. And Festin? Robert Festin made even less sense than usual when questioned, but that didn't matter, because it was so obvious now that he had been in the pantry all the time. Forsythe, at last, was entirely in the clear. The man Annabelle had glimpsed on the quarterdeck had been her own cousin, though she had refused to confirm it, weeping wildly instead.