Samurai and Other Stories (15 page)

The First Mate looked at me, and I at him.
 

“We have served together over twenty years, Cap’n. I have been proud to call you my friend.”

“And I you,” I replied. We both had a tear in our eye, there at the end.

“Goodbye, Cap’n,” he said, as the native on the dock pointed a long white finger, straight at him.

What happened next will stay with me for the remainder of what is left of my life.
 

The First Mate shook and juddered, in the same manner as Dave the Bosun’s mate had done a few moments before. He gritted his teeth. He stuck both arms into the pitch, all the way up to his shoulders. Before I could move, he took the torch from me. He leapt from the boat, straight at the native.

“Havenhome!” he called, his voice ringing out loud and clear in the night. He landed just in front of the tall white figure, stepped forward, and grabbed it in a tight embrace. I have seen men’s backs broken by that grip, but the native ne’er flinched. The Mate put all his strength into it, but the white figure was unbowed.
 

Then, at the last, as the skin in the Mate’s face went blue, he yelled out once more, a formless word. He brought down the torch, and set light to his pitch covered arms.

I stood and watched, with tears running through a grim smile, as the pair of them burned. The feather crown went first, blazing all as one and sending flames up the creature’s back. Where the First Mate’s pitch-covered arms touched its body they stuck, searing huge patches of flesh at a time.
 

Together the bodies fell on the dock. The Mate was surely dead by now, but the creature could not escape from his embrace.
 

Even then I thought the creature might break free, for the flames had begun to die down, yet clearly, it still showed sign of what passed for life in that white frozen frame.
 

Finally, just as I was starting to despair, the powder in the pitch took.
 

A yellow flame shot ten yards into the sky. When it died down there was nothing left of either body that could be recognized... just one single, fused mass of blackened flesh.

*
   
*
   
*

I am decided. This will be my last ever entry in this journal, made in the hope that what is related may help some other Christian souls from sharing the fate of my crewmates. In the meantime I can do little more than offer up prayers, for the First Mate, and all the other brave men of the Havenhome who will ne’er return home.

This proud ship, my home these many years, has sailed its last, and I am no longer Captain of anything other than my own soul. In truth, I do not think I will ever be able to lead men again. If I make it to home port alive I will retire.
 

I will spend my time supping beer in the harbour and telling tall tales with the other old gentleman, content to keep my feet warm before the fires of hearth and home.
 

But that seems like a long way off, another lifetime where the sun shines hot and yellow on the fields, and my Lizzie stands at the door, smiling. I have some of the Havenhome’s tale yet to tell before I can begin my journey towards that most welcome of sights.

After the Mate had made his sacrifice I could do naught but stand there, staring at the smoking ruin of all that was left of my friends and shipmates. I paid particular attention to the charred mass where lay the Mate and the native, half expecting at any moment that a white figure would rise from the dockside to mock me once more.
 

Nothing moved except the stirring of acrid smoke on the breeze.

The wind died, like the last sigh of an old man on his death-bed. A cloud ran over the full moon. Slowly at first, then faster until water ran in runnels off the deck; the snow thawed.
 

And still I stood there, long into the night, long after the sun came up and the last of the frost was taken by the morning.

I felt empty, devoid of action, abandoned by hope. I was only brought out of my reverie by old Stumpy Jack, who emerged, blinking into the sunlight, looking near as dead as some of those lying on the dockside.
 

“Are we alive, Cap’n?” he said, “or in Paradise?”

“Does this look like any Paradise you might expect?” I said.

He stood beside me for a long time, staring out over the smoking dock.

“Is it over?” he whispered.

“I know not whether it will ever be over,” I replied. “But it is over for now.”

It was Stumpy Jack who brought me inside, him who made me drink and eat, that I might stay alive when all of my brethren lay dead around us.

And even now, while I write this, the old man is showing more fortitude than I thought he possessed. He has brought the remains of the Mate and the native inside the ship.
 

“The rest of them, Cap’n? What shall we do with the rest of them?”

There are bodies, mostly charred and unrecognizable, strewn all across the dock. The Mate’s pitch and powder concoction did for them all in the end.
 

“By rights, these people deserve a Christian burial,” I said.

“Nay, Cap’n,” Old Stumpy said. “Whatever part of them belonged to the Lord has already gone. And neither you nor I have the strength, or the heart, to waste in spending another night near this place.”

I reluctantly had to agree with him.

We will scuttle the Havenhome here, on this dock. I will leave my journal in my chest, wrapped in oilskins. In that manner, if anyone should chance on the drowned boat, they may, if the Lord is with them, find this journal first, and stop before they unleash what Jack and I have left at the bottom of the hold.

We have gathered our provisions. We will leave tonight. The only other thing I take with me from my cabin is my bible, in the hope it will give me solace in the nights to come. But I fear I will ne’er find hope again in the words of the Lord, for I know the pastor’s white eyes will ever accuse me, even in the deepest depths of slumber. If the Lord did not see fit to save such a holy and devout man as the pastor, what hope is there for the likes of me, who has done so many things that require repentance?

Forgive me Lizzie, for I know now you will never read this. But if the Lord gives me strength, I intend to head down the coast, for warmer climes and friendly company. Mayhap I shall return yet to home port, and your soft arms.
 

You will fill my dreams until I am once more at your side. Be well, my love. Be well for both of us.
 

Your loving husband, John.

THE YULE LOG

John took the best part of a week in choosing the right tree and another day deciding which branch would be sacrificed. After a further day he had the sawn-off log cleared of particularly resistant lichen that had taken hold in the crook of a branch. Only then was he ready. He clamped the log tight to his workbench, made sure the chisel was sharp, and began.
 

He cried as he carved; the memory of her singing always brought tears, her pure soprano climbing above his ponderous chord changes on the wheezing harmonium.

Jacqueline
.

It took a longish time to get her name engraved in the log. The cold didn’t help, biting deep into old bones despite the furnace in the corner of the workshop. After the name was done he had to work fast, for it was already dusk and the log needed to be in the grate before midnight, otherwise it would all have been for naught.

He quickly chiselled out the second line; words long since etched on his memory.

Ae fond kiss.

He carried the log through to the main cottage and took care preparing a fire, using just the right mixture of paper and coal to ensure that the log would not burn too quickly when placed in the front of the grate. That done he went to the dresser and carefully retrieved a charred piece of wood from where it had been wrapped in a handkerchief. He thrust it deep into the bowels of the coal and lit the dry paper with a match.
 

Once he was satisfied the fire wouldn’t go out, he prepared the next part of the ritual—three fingers of single malt in a glass by his chair, and enough tobacco to see him through the night. The log cracked and spat as he filled his first pipe. Almost immediately he was lost in reverie.

It will take time.
 

She has gone to a better place.

For most of the year he managed to believe, helped by mindless toil in the fields, hard liquor at night, and the crumbs of comfort that came from faith. But on this, the anniversary of the day she was taken from him, faith proved harder to come by. Everywhere he looked he saw her traces; from the mirror above the mantel they’d got as a wedding present from her father to the walnut pipe in his hand that the same old man had smoked all his adult life.
 

John did not notice the tears that ran down his cheeks until he was brought back to the present by the church bells calling the faithful to midnight mass.

There was a time when he would have walked the snowy lane to the church, arm in arm with Jackie, stars twinkling in her eyes. Those walks had stopped all too suddenly, the end coming as they got ready for Mass that fateful night. First came a headache, then a fit, and then she was gone. A doctor, a policeman and the vicar, three wise men, ushered her off to the great beyond.

Now John sat, with the log burning, waiting for a sign that another year was worth the effort. Carols whispered in the night across the cold air between his cottage and the church. Snow pattered on the window in an accompanying beat. Fresh tears came, and suddenly John was weeping uncontrollably. The old harmonium in the corner moaned in sympathy.

He looked up from the fire to where a quick movement in the mirror caught his eye.

Jackie?

Cold lips brushed at his cheek, tears freezing in his whiskers.

A high, soprano voice carried through the room, just audible above the moan of the instrument.

Ae fond kiss.

John sat upright in his chair, and in the process knocked the whisky glass over. It clattered on the floorboards. The harmonium stilled. Outside the snow died to a mere rustle. Over at the church the congregation was between carols. Silence fell.

Did I imagine it?
 

The next thought came immediately.

Does it matter?

He sat in the chair all night. In the morning he took a charred portion of the log from the cooling grate. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it away in the dresser. He felt refreshed. As he closed the drawer he sang the words that would see him through another year.

Ae fond kiss.

And then we sever.

LIVING THE DREAM

In the dream the house looks older, more dilapidated. A crack runs from the lintel of the front door all the way to the guttering, and the climbing rose—the one outstanding feature—has withered and died, its dry stems crawling like wrinkles across the walls.

The Watcher stands on the doorstep, listening, waiting for the noise that always comes. Autumn leaves flutter around in the sudden breeze, but still the Watcher cannot move.

The front door rattles, as if someone is vainly trying to get out. The Watcher’s eyes are drawn to the gap underneath it—remembering how the wind whistles through, bringing its chill to the whole house. The door rattles again, but that still isn’t it.

And then it comes, the soft thud, as of a chopper on bone.
 

A red flood gushes from under the door—a roaring wave of blood that washes the Watcher away and down into a blackness from which there is no return.

*
   
*
   
*

John Thorne sat upright in bed, breath coming in hot gasps.

What the hell was that all about?
 

The shadows in his room had no answers for him. He lay awake for almost an hour as the moonlight crawled across the ceiling, but sleep stayed away. In the end he got out of bed and went to the kitchen. While he was making a sandwich the dream stayed fresh in his mind. He felt strange, almost guilty, as if he’d been caught masturbating.
 

And where did all that blood come from?

Thorne wasn’t a deep thinker, and his imagination did not stretch as far as positing any supernatural agency, but it had felt almost as if someone else had been inside his head.
 

Too much cheese before bed makes for a restless night.

He could almost
hear
his old mum say it—
she
would always be inside his head.
 

The acts of domesticity involved in putting together the bread, butter and sardines rooted him back in reality and finally the dream faded, leaving just a memory... of wind and blood.

He munched on the sandwich as he headed back upstairs and dropped back into bed. By twenty past three he was fast asleep. In the morning the dream had faded to little more than a memory of a disturbed night. When he left the house after breakfast he felt a breeze at his heels and something stirred in his mind, but that too was forgotten as work blew everything else away in a flurry of crates to be stacked and floors to be swept.

That all changed late afternoon. He had just the main loading bay of the factory left to sweep. Mary Carruthers, the administrator, came out of her office, red-faced and puffing. It was a hot day and she carried at least a hundred pounds more than she aught to. On days like this, every one of those pounds showed. Normally Thorne wouldn’t have given her another look but she chose that moment to drop a pen and, with her back to him, bent to pick it up.