Deluded Your Sailors (26 page)

pillaged, any noise of it obscured by the banging door. Our remaining fat and flour: gone. Slipping, cursing, slipping again, we visited the shacks, one by one, until we found lips glistening with fat, fingers white with flour: Michael Riordan, one of the indebted papists Lacey had brought from Harbour Grace, huddled on his pallet, crouching near the wall. Housemate Eamon Gate stared at him.

Riordan turned pale; Lacey said naught.

Lacey and I returned to his Hall. It happened to be a Sunday morning, and along the way, Lacey pointed at the bowed trees. ‘Not one left upright. How will I fix him? Cannard. Go door to door, now, tell everyone to gather in the Hall. Gate and Riordan, too.'

Stiff jaw warping the message, my words caused some surprise, and no little resentment, but all did as their Admiral bade, and soon enough we did crowd into the storeroom of Lacey's Hall. The sleet melted to a cold rain, drenching everyone. The inhabitants, even Riordan, gathered in front of Lacey's rough table, which he also used as a desk. I stood to one side, facing the door; Lacey stood behind the table, leafing calmly through the Bible he had taken from his chest, acting as though his congregation did not exist.

Then, without looking up, he opened to
Luke
and he read, quite badly: ‘It is impossible but that offences will come, but woe unto him through whom they come. It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than he should offend one of these little ones.'

I thought this a very odd choice of lesson after the work of a thief and waited for the commandment to forgive. Instead, Lacey rode hard for the mustard seed. ‘And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root and be thou planted in the sea, and it should obey you.' Then he calmly closed the Bible and covered it with his strong hands. In the dimness of the Hall, he seemed to look us each in the eye, one by one, and then he said, ‘A thief stands among us.'

Truscott cleared his throat and glanced at the faces around him, seeking guilt. He found it in Michael Riordan.

Lacey continued, saying, ‘A thief who would steal from your mouths what we've all hoarded through the winter. A thief who has stolen from our shared future.'

Riordan spat before addressing Lacey. ‘We run out of food on two accounts.' He pointed to the water. ‘
Boyne
is late.' He pointed to me. ‘And we got an extra mouth.'

Lacey nodded and said, ‘An extra mouth with a near-broken jaw. A mouth belonging to a man who shall pay his debt. Now, who among us has not been hungry? Who among us has not lain in bed all day, cursing the wind for waking us, then struggling to get back into sleep, only to wake in the true darkness, staring, alert and hungrier than before? And cold? Who has not felt the cold?'

Young Aurelius, the only walking child present – we did not expect the two infants to survive the winter – spoke high and clear, ‘I'm cold.'

Jackman cuffed his son on the ear. ‘Shut that. Admiral's talking.'

But Lacey nodded again, gesturing with his hands for Jackman to be gentler with the child. ‘We are all cold. We are all hungry.

And Michael Riordan would steal flour. At least when Prometheus stole fire, he shared it.'

The inhabitants turned to look on Riordan, now stepping back and stumbling against an empty barrel. Truscott had come forward and conferred with Lacey, pointing to the door. Wind drove the rain against the walls, and more sleet hid within the rain. Aurelius took advantage of this pageant to pick up a torn net and play with it, pretending he stood in a dory, casting out. The inhabitants stepped towards Riordan again, studying him in the dim light, squinting at him. Lacey questioned a suggestion made by Truscott, and Truscott shrugged, indicating he had done his best. Lacey nodded his assent and then showed his palms as though helpless. Michael Riordan remained at the back of the Hall, guarded by a group that did not speak, only stared. Aurelius tried to cast out the net, but it tangled at his feet. Truscott, always graceful despite his size, strode to where Aurelius played and took up a small wooden box. From that he removed a massive nail, more a spike, and a heavy hammer. Riordan looked from Lacey to Truscott, back to Lacey. Truscott returned to the doorway and reached as high as he could above the doorjamb, to the split log just beneath the ceiling, and drove the spike through the wood. Then he opened the door, letting in some blessedly fresh air, and sleet, and hammered again, beating down the end of the nail against the wood outside. I wondered this stress did not crack the wall. Coming back in, wet but determined, Truscott eyed the placing of the spike, measuring. Once more he strode to the back of the Hall, picked up a line and returned to the doorway. Still, none spoke, and still, Aurelius played at casting his net. Truscott bowlined one end to the spike, tugging hard to test the strength of his enterprise, then called the accused. Riordan did not move. Truscott spoke then with heavy contempt. ‘Must I come fetch you?'

None argued hunger. None argued for Riordan.

Riordan walked quietly to Lacey and Truscott. Looking to each in turn, Riordan scowled and removed his shirts, peeled away layers of fraying grey and yellowed cloth. Loose skin sagged off his bony arms and back. Truscott tied Riordan's wrists together. Rain and sleet rattled against the walls.

Lacey looked it over. ‘Truscott, open the door, or I shall drive him against it.'

Leaning around Riordan, Truscott did so, while Lacey rummaged through his chest, carelessly moving some objects, treating others as fragile treasures, until he retrieved a three-tailed cat. He studied it a moment, as if to read something written on the knotted-off ends, calmly positioned himself behind Riordan, and swung.

Aurelius's head jerked round at the dull slaps of first blow, and he dropped the net. He saw the second blow, and the third.

Riordan cried out at the fourth and ran out of breath on the seventh, and he swayed through the doorway to meet the sleet.

Lacey stopped, his face red and sweating, and Truscott released Riordan, supporting him to Lacey's own chair. Riordan's breath came hard round his teeth.

Lacey gave benediction. ‘Go on. Go home. Mind the ice.

Cannard, get the water from the kettle there, see if it be cool enough to bathe his back.'

Gate did his best to tend Riordan's back. One day, late May, when the rotten snow melted so quickly that all footprints deformed, both men left. Lacey pronounced them ‘Masterless, with legs long as light.'

We did not see Riordan or Gate again.

Grown Aurelius snorted and frowned at me. These memories of a flogged thief hardened into anger and something akin to contempt in his eyes. He said ‘If you will not answer me, then you be no better than Admiral Lacey.'

A bitter comparison. ‘No better than Lacey? That man confided in me he'd stand between ye and God, aye, he'd make himself obstacle and ye'd never see round him. You compare me to that? Get out of my sight.'

‘Yet you'd control me with those words, Cannard,' said Aurelius Jackman before gently closing the door.

Open the door
, Lacey had said,
or I shall drive him against it
.

Aurelius felt grieved, I later discovered, by an illness of his wife, who indeed died a few days later in a fever so high, said her oddly subdued husband, so high he feared hell and not bones burned up through her. True to himself, Aurelius laughed graveside. He grinned at me, eyes hot like I never saw them again, as I dutifully recited blunt words of dust. Then, still grinning, Aurelius recalled aloud the day she agreed to be his wife. ‘And she says to me, Is it so long as it looks?' The wind blew colder and harder here up the side of the blunt cliff, in the only bit of high ground we had, and this strained ribaldry did not warm me. Aurelius chattered still, and now his sons smiled as their father continued, ‘I promised her it was and that it would find her happy coin. And she said, Well, I suppose, but let me test the goods. And as God be my witness, that woman squeezed my codpiece so as to know herself whether I'd stuffed it not, and then I proved it.' Snorts of laughter then and high giggles from the women. ‘And soon after that came Tobias here.' Whereat Aurelius Jackman, newly bereft of his wife and best companion, led the duped mourners back to his crooked shack.

18) THE WANDERING EYE
M
AY
1733,
THE PRIVATE HOME OF
A
DMIRAL
D
UNTON
, P
ORTSMOUTH
, E
NGLAND
.

—I like not your colouring, Mr Kelly. I beg my old admiral friend for shelter where I might meet with capable man of intelligence, and look, God dumps a redhead at the door. I like your name even less. You smack of Judas and the Irish, sir, of passionate treachery.

Lieutenant John Kelly kept quite still. Abuse like this from Phillip Runciman was hardly unknown, but it was always unwelcome. Kelly half expected a sympathetic glance from Runciman's secretary, a bitter-looking man on a crutch, face heavily scarred, but no look came.

Dull daylight, further blunted by heavy curtains, played across Runciman's slob-ice eyes, and the left one wandered. He cracked his knuckles. —Reports on your conduct in the Navy are pleasing.

Sir Alexander – Admiral Dunton to you – tells me you were an inquisitive but quiet boy, and you stopped smiling after your father was lost at sea. Dunton, I fear, is not long with us. You noticed his wasting, his high and fruity breath? He drinks water constantly, is somnolent. I have seen it before; soon he shall take to sleep and not wake up. However, I did not beg for a capable man so we might mourn a death in advance.

Lieutenant Kelly waited.

—Gold, Lieutenant. The gold stories are spat in the coffeehouses. Men laughed first, added lascivious details. The gold was taken from a ship en route to Boston. The gold was stolen from a woman of means taking secret passage on a frigate.

Runciman stood up and walked out around Kelly, who studied the vacated shadow. Then Runciman's voice came from below Kelly's left shoulder.

—John Kelly, second lieutenant. Is there anything more useless than a second lieutenant?

—Only a third or fourth lieutenant, sir.

Runciman stood in front of Kelly now, eyes cold and fierce and, somewhere, laughing. Little hands dwarfed by his large wig, he passed that wig to Kelly and exposed his naked head. —Do me the service of holding this.

Behind the desk again, Runciman reached to the back of his balding head and plucked out a grey hair, then laid it on a seacard that his secretary had just weighted at its four corners with small rocks. Runciman dismissed him, adding a command he lock the door. The secretary stared and sneered at Kelly as he passed, and Kelly took a slow breath. Once the lock clicked, Runciman shook his head. —Keep my enemies closer, aye. Would you come study this, Mr Kelly? The seacard was privately sketched for me in 1722.

—Tis the Mediterranean, Isle of Benvolio.

—Aye, you'll make midshipman yet. Pry past the gold stories, and you may find Benvolio and the Finn stories.

—Who is Finn, sir?

—Truly, I should like to know. I hear Finn is a wicked pirate.

Tales to frighten linkboys. A sloop called
Kindly One
crashed ashore in the Isles of Scilly a fortnight ago, bows scorched, master and boatswain long dead, murder done. One Matthew Finn named, Bristol-born by the accent, but also sounding of other lands. And I also believe Finn has stolen gold rightfully belonging to His Majesty, gold I needed to complete a transaction abroad. Do you grope at my meanings yet?

—I believe you speak of spies.

Runciman touched the hair on the seacard, sad, or made so by a trick of the light.

—Lost, taken or killed? No, this one ran. Others longed to go masterless, but this one ran. A description from Massachusetts colony, Captain Matthew Finn, master of the sloop
Kittiwayke
out of Salem, a Bristolman distinguished from his fellows by having escaped the Sallee Rovers at Barbary but there suffering an injury that prevented his full growth to manhood. My Finn, the one I knew years ago, also bore such injury. Botched circumcision, a lot of it about. No doubt Finn said something to anger those with knives. My Finn, just Kit then, also lamed my secretary and carved up his face. A little thing, ‘Kit' or ‘Matt' Finn, but tricky enough.

Stole the Benvolian gold, too, coins, figurines and dust that rightly belong to the King. Windows demolished, watches overcome, and handsome ills by your contrivance done. Ha! Finally pinned you wriggling to the chart. Murder, no less, though also a matter of time. What hauled the maddened fury out of you?

Kelly's fingers sweated under the wig as he waited for Runciman to speak sanely.

—Consider Finn my prodigal, Mr Kelly, my
rara avis
.

Consider Finn cunning and dangerous. Consider yourself Finn's escort back to me, alive and in good health, for I need and I will have Finn's especial usefulness. And the gold. Pass me my wig.