Legenda Maris (13 page)

At this Zephyrin shrugged, and smilingly
asked, “Yourself?”

But it was a fact, they could not even
hand each other the salt at table in the saloon, not even blow their noses or
look at the stars, without one would make unfavourable comment on it in the
hearing of the other.

On the eighth day, as the ship bore
north-easterly under peerless skies, Zephyrin came up on deck, apparently, one
might have thought,
searching
for Vendrei. Instead the searcher found a
seat the older man had occupied, where lay one of Vendrei’s Latin books, which
contained some of the writings of Catullus.

To Ymil’s surprise—could Zeph decipher
Latin? —the slender captain began to read, or pretend to read, the book.

Back came Vendrei.

“What do you think you’re at, sir, in
God’s name? Put that down. It is my property. It was my father’s—I won’t have
your unclean paws on it—
down
, I say!” he almost shouted, as if to some
unruly hound.

Not before had Ymil witnessed Vendrei
quite so out of his coolth.

Zephyrin though looked up calmly, and
recited from the book, in excellent Latin: “
Miser Vendre, desinas ineptire
et quot vides perisse perditum ducas.
”

Ymil’s not unlessoned brain bounded
after the words. They came, he thought, from the lyric poems, but Zephyrin had
replaced Catullus’ own name with a version of
Vendrei
. The meaning?
Approximately— “Piteable Vendrei, leave off your clowning, and relinquish as
lost what you can see is lost.”

The prince had gone white.

“And what do you suppose, you
dog
,
I have lost? What can
you
know of loss,
dog
, that never possessed
a single thing of worth, nor would know one now if ever it should lie before
you? “

“Ah,” said Zephyrin, getting up and
replacing the book neatly on the seat. “But I
do
know a thing of worth
when it is before, me. Even if it lies there dead on its back.”

And so saying the younger antagonist
walked off, leaving the elder one in a definite state of ire and discomfort.

Dead on its back?

What could
that
mean?

The Athenian ladies, (with both of whom,
Ymil believed, Vendrei had a romantic nocturnal understanding), were whispering
nervously. Prince Vendrei went to them, gracefully flirting and soothing,
apologising for his annoyance, saying the other fellow was scum, and not to be
thought of anymore.

Gradually Vendrei’s colour returned to normal.
The ‘other fellow’, Ymil had thought, had flushed in equal amounts to Vendrei’s
pallor. As if they were a balance of heat and cold.

There must then be more to all this than
mere jealous antipathy, must there not? Of course, Ymil was already quite informed
that madness motivated Zephyrin. But in this matter the cause stayed unsure.

Zephyrin in any case did not ornament
the saloon with personal presence that evening. And the following afternoon,
which was on the ninth day of the voyage, they were far out on the crossing,
not even the hint of an island yet on the horizon, and a card game was started
up.

The gaming table had been set out on
deck, under the sail aft, for at that point the light was mellow and the
weather slow and honey-sweet. Vendrei was playing, losing as so often he did
and with his usual good manners, to the old merchant from Chabbit and the wily
widow from Tint, plus two or three more that Ymil later could not quite
remember, a thing for which, in the wake of the shipwreck and their vanishment,
he chid himself.

About three o’clock by the sun, Zephyrin
appeared like an early moon. What a beautiful creature, all that ivory
blondness, and such a face—nearly, Ymil judged, fine-carved as a woman’s—and
those black-green eyes, level as two silver spoons full-drawn from the deeps of
the sea.

Never before had this rogue officer
deigned to join in with the gambling. Now a chair was selected and the figure
sat itself, directly facing Vendrei across the painted oblongs of the cards.

“The stakes are high,” said Vendrei
flatly.

Zephyrin did something that chilled Ymil
through; drawing the dull notched blade of cavalry sword, that pale hand laid
it along the table’s edge. “The sword’s all I possess of any value. Will it
do?”

The table was silent as the inside of a
lead box.

Much later, Ymil believed that this, in
actuality, was the initial moment when the temper of sea and sky might be felt
to change.

“Young sir,” said the Tintian widow, in
hesitant Greek, “are thee so desperate thee does risk the weapon of thy trade?”

Zephyrin bowed. “I’ve risked it in
battle, madam. Now I do so again. For here’s
another
battle.”

“Come, lad,” said the Chabbit merchant.
“You’re hardly older than my boy, my last born by my dear wife, now in Heaven’s
garden. Put up the sword. I’ll lend you coins –”

“No, sir, with my thanks. My fight, not
yours.”

“What fight is this, then?” asked
another man.

But obviously they knew, having assumed
it was the eternal feud between the captain and the prince.

Zephyrin stretched out long legs. Despite
that slender frame, they had all seen, Zephyrin was strong, and only three or
four inches less in height than tall Vendrei himself.

“
He
cheats,” now said Zephyrin
casually, and nodding at Vendrei almost companionably. “I wish to prove it.”

Few jaws that did not drop. A buzz of
astonishment next. Then the Chabbitese, not illogically exclaimed, “
Cheats
,
boy! You’re cracked. His honour
loses
nine times out of ten”“

“Yes, such is his cleverness, gentlemen
and lady. For he lulls you all. Then, during the last days, when we near the
wine-red shore of Taurus, he’ll win the hoard back by his tricks, and fleece
you of the rest down to the very skin, like shorn goats. I’ve met his sort
before. A prince? You only have his word for that. I’d not put it past the
devil to search your luggage and filch your wallets too.”

All this while, a steady background
syncopation, there had been the
slap-slap
of Vendrei’s glove on his
boot; Vendrei merely keeping time.

But now that ceased, for Vendrei got to
his feet. And it was exactly then that Ymil swung about and glared away to
starboard, dazzled, his mind leaping and crying to him,
Of course, you idiot
Ymil! It’s THAT! What else can it be? All bloody lies
—

After which he heard the duellist’s
challenge, the blow of the glove to each of Zephyrin’s cheeks. And the sky
filled as if from one of Ymil’s leaky ink-pencils, and the storm rose from the
belly of the deep.

3

Above
the sands of the rock-strewn beach, the land lifted into wild green woods of
feathery poplar and giant freckled laurel, shadowed by pine and fir and other
conifers.

Beyond, nothing was visible that any of
them could make out. Although the Chabbitese merchant’s son had said at dawn he
had seen something vague and far away that might be either a mountain—or a
cloud. An hour after, this had disappeared.

Conversely, to either side of the
landfall, the shore tapered gradually into high, grainy cliffs, perhaps
impassable.

Their party was small. It comprised a
pair of sailors named Dakos and Crazt, the merchant and his son, (said son having
helped his father ashore, since the merchant could not swim), the old Tintian
widow, who claimed God and her skirts had borne her up, and Ymil. There were
just two others. Vendrei. Zephyrin.

It transpired they both could swim very
well. And even Zephyrin’s precious wig had been spared by the sea, for it had
somehow been kept clamped on under the hat.

Everything else of moment, or use,
however, was lost, drunk down by the greedy water.

Not a single gun had been saved. The
flintlocks from Ymil’s, Vendrei’s and the widow’s baggage lay in the ocean’s
basement. Not even the ancient explosive matchlock Dakos had prided himself on
remained. The sailors and the widow—she had been commendably well-armed—had
retained a variety of small knives. But they would be effective for no more, as
the merchant remarked, than picking one’s nails or teeth. The merchant’s son
had his pocket catapult, but the string had snapped.

As for Vendrei and Zephyrin’s
blades—they were gone.

The latter’s sword, as everyone well
recalled, had been taken off minutes before the storm, and laid on the card
table as surety. While Vendrei’s sword-belt, blade included, had been ripped
from around his waist by the violence of the waves. Gone too were his coat and
waistcoat. Most of the survivors were tattered and bereft also of certain items
of clothing. The widow had suffered the least, had lost only hairpins, allowing
her magnificent silver and ebony tresses to tumble free around her. Ymil, even
in this extremity, noticed the merchant abruptly taking her in. Though not
young, a little older than he, she was comely, and had shown herself a woman of
character.

Despite losses, the new day was warm
when once the sun rose. The previous night they had lit a fire, which was made
easily possible by driftwood and shed branches in the wood. They had no problem
with fresh water either. A small freshet ran from the wood into a pool adjacent
to the beach. They must only therefore get their bearings, organise a look-out
for shipping, and for helpful or harmful visitors—persons, animals. A search
must be made too for eatable food.

These duties were now undeniably prime
targets.

Not one among them could disagree.

Vendrei stood in the morning light and
scowled in fury at them all.

“Be damned to that. The lying filth
there owes me his life. We are sworn to a duel. For me, nothing else shall
count till I have settled it in his blood.”

And Zephyrin, who had been sitting on a
rock, inspecting the salt damage to his boots, glanced up and said, “For once,
he and I are in some agreement. I can give my mind to nothing until the
matter’s seen to, in blood certainly, but his, of course, not mine.”

Vendrei swore inventively and at some
length. The widow and the merchant’s son looked on in envy. The others, Ymil
included, were slightly shocked by the terms and the words in several
languages.

“But where in the name of God—” rounded
off Vendrei in a roar, “are we to find two swords?”

A
writer’s life, unless he be not only talented but also blessed by fortune, can
turn out a scrabbly affair. So it had for Ymil. An educated untypical patron of
his mother, the street-girl’s night-time acquaintance, had taken pity on the
dishevelled child, and taught him to read and write, and even enough of figures
he could add two and two and not make seven. Otherwise Ymil’s existence was
uncouth, and by the age of twelve he was acting as both runner for a gambling
den and an occasional thief. By inevitable stages, equally he ascended and
failed in these unchosen careers. The ascent was due to his knack with literacy
as well as his nimbleness and gift of observation. The failure came from his
total dislike of brutality. He had seen enough of that in the hovel with his
mother. Meanwhile, by the cliché of a solitary candle, he often wrote down
stories, political reflections, and now and then even a song or two.
Intermittently then he would have the tiny success of selling them, seeing them
in print in popular pamphlets, or on the sort of rough paper sheets that
circulated among the poor but readerly, and were subsequently often put to use
during less erudite functions.

By the year of his majority, Ymil could
count thirty- one bits and pieces published, most by then long since destroyed,
and none of them having paid him more than the price of a meal that would
excite only a mouse.

He kept body and soul in tandem another
way.

On the day he boarded the ill-fated
ship, Ymil, for almost ten years, had earned his bread by providing his
services as a reliable blood-hound. He had discovered, watched and followed,
persuaded, tricked and delivered up countless strays, runaways, villains and
madmen, to those who wished to have them back, did not know where or how to
search, but could pay well one who did.

And it was on just such an errand that Ymil
had taken ship at all.

He had been in eastern Europe the winter
before, on other business. Then a rich aristocrat summoned him to his palace.
It was a grand one, with marbles, silk drapes, gold candlesticks. But Ymil was
respectfully unimpressed. By that time he had seen such stuff frequently. “I
hear you can find anyone on earth, providing he lives,” had stated the aristocrat,
a big man in his middle years who, they said, possessed three houses here,
another in Petragrava, and a clutch of estates in the country. In demeanour he
was an odd combination of expansive and guarded, but when Ymil modestly
suggested tales of his wisdom were exaggerated, the aristocrat ignored that
like a hiccup, and told Ymil straight out what he required.