The Dead Men Stood Together (13 page)

XXIV

For days and days, we lay like that. It was as if the moment that follows death had been endlessly unravelled and spun out into an eternity.

It was the unearthly stillness that followed a hammer striking an anvil. Time seemed to have exhaled its last breath and left us all marooned. Yet time did move on.

The sun came up and the sun set. The days were cloudless and relentless in the dazzling brightness. The nights were star filled and moon washed. Through both my uncle stood on the patch of deck uncluttered by corpses and hung his head.

I would say ‘hung his head in shame’, but I didn’t believe him capable of such an emotion. More likely he hung his head in self-pity. And yet he lived on at our expense. He lived on whilst the corpses of better men lay at his feet.

I thought of all the stories he had told of his battles and wondered how many, if any, were true. Had he stood at the centre of such a death count before? Or was it all boasting or wild imagining?

I could detect nothing one way or another from his face. His expression gave little away. He seemed to be in a kind of trance.

And I could do nothing but watch him. Can you imagine what that was like? To never sleep nor even rest your eyes or move your head for want of a different view? To be trapped inside your useless body, peeping through your own eyes as if they were spy-holes?

Hour after hour after hour, I lay there, feeling nothing save a growing disgust for my uncle. My mind was all that seemed to move in that stillness, and yet I could not move it beyond the confines of that deathly ship.

I would have gladly gone away in my mind to happier days and happier places, but, with my eyes held open, I was unable to think of anything except the horror of the present.

Hour after hour after hour, yet we – the dead crew – did not rot or reek the way we should have done. Some magic meant that, though we lay all day in the full force of the sun, we did not change.

The sun should have scalded me but my eyes did not boil in their sockets. My skin did not peel and flake. My body did not bloat and split open like ripe fruit. Nor did any of the dead aboard the ship.

Why? What was the purpose in our preservation? I could not help thinking that we all lay in some great pause before the next act would be played out.

But whilst we did not change, my uncle looked day by day more like a walking cadaver, his eyes sunken, his skin cracked and burned. The albatross was mostly skeleton and feathers now, and still it seemed to weigh him down like a millstone.

No anchor could have bent him more. It was as if he had the body of each member of the crew strung around his neck like a garland.

One evening the setting sun painted the sky red and gold and lit up the timbers of the ship, as though all about us was burning. I wished it were true. I wished the whole ship was aflame and us with it if meant an end to this nightmare.

I tried with all my might to take my mind to another place, and ghosts of my mother and my father and my home did come but they were frail and spectral and they faded like morning mist.

This firelight bathed everything in its glow: the weather-beaten ship, the lifeless crew on the deck and my damned and hated uncle with the tattered remnant of the albatross.

Whilst I stared at him, some small leech-like slime creature had escaped from the general mass about the ship and had worked its way up the hull and now flopped on to the deck, where it slid across the boards in a series of disgusting spasms.

It twitched and jerked its way along, leaving a ghostly trail of slime behind it. It disappeared out of my view and only reappeared as it began to creep and slide across my chest and up my neck and over my face, my open eyes!

Oh, the dread and revulsion as it blocked my sight! And then, all of a sudden, it was gone, and light streamed back. I saw the silhouetted shape of my uncle standing over me. He had clearly knocked the thing away.

He looked down at my face and shook his head wearily. Even the horror of that thing sliding over my eyes could not make me grateful to him for removing it. All of it was his fault. All of this was his doing.

He seemed to understand this in spite of my unmoving face and closed his eyes, and leaned back until he faced the sky, and then he let out a great roar and a moan that shook the ship like thunder.

He turned back angrily, his eyes wild and wide, and he lunged forward, his grasping hand blurring as it raced towards my eye. I thought at first he was lunging at me, but I realised he was grabbing the slime-thing.

He held the creature up to his face and snarled at it as it writhed and coiled in his fist, curling its tail around his wrist and forearm.

It was black and featureless, sleek and slippery as an eel, but with the same eerie green glow as the rest of its kind. It raised what must have been its head and seemed to contemplate my uncle – though I saw no sign of any eyes.

My uncle strode to the side of the ship and I could guess his intention. He was going to slam it against the rail, as a fisherman might do with a lively catch, and then toss it into the sea.

He raised his arm high with the creature struggling in his hand, but just as he was about to bring it crashing down he seemed to freeze. Then slowly he lowered his arm.

His breathing calmed and he once again held the creature in front of his face. This time he regarded it less with anger than with sadness.

Slowly, and gently, he released the creature into the sea.

XXV

Hour upon hour passed by as I watched my uncle standing at the bulwarks, looking down at the sea – though how many, I could not say. I am certain that the sun set, and more than once.

I wondered if he would ever move again and it was startling when he suddenly climbed up on to the mainstays – the braces that held the rigging for the mainmast – the albatross dangling from his neck, his body bowed with the weight of it.

I assumed that he was making his peace with God before throwing himself into the water. And then I wondered if perhaps it was just the albatross that was going to end up in the sea. After all, who could force him to wear it now?

But he made no move to take it off. He stood there for a long time, staring at the sea below, his right arm wrapped around one of the thick hemp ropes. I saw his eyes glisten as tears welled there and overflowed the lids, trickling down his bearded face.

I cursed him all over again at the thought of this last selfish act. How dare he think that he should have an end to this misery whilst I had to endure it for who knew how long?

Why should he have control over his fate when I was held in the grip of a madness he had spawned? Was I to lie here for all time, staring out across these bodies at the passing days?

The red light from the setting sun mixed eerily with the green glow flickering below and I imagined the creatures moving around the ship and cursed them too for living on when so many men had died.

How could it be that our lives had been so easily forfeited on the roll of a dice and these slimy, squirming things were allowed to live on? These men had mothers, brothers, sons, wives. Their lives couldn’t be compared to these sea slugs – or to the albatross for that matter.

My uncle’s lips moved, but at first I could not make out the words. But then his voice grew louder – or my hearing sharper. To my amazement, he was praying. Praying to the very force who had let us all die at the throw of the dice.

He sobbed to himself and asked for forgiveness and suddenly the rope that held the albatross around his neck gave way and snapped, and I heard the splash as it dropped into the water below.

There was a dazzle of green and golden light from the unseen creatures gathered around the ship. The dancing light played across my uncle’s tormented face and then there was a change.

Even though I was some way off, my mind seemed to concentrate my vision, as though I looked through an eyeglass, and I could see my uncle’s face enlarged and in sharp detail.

The haunted expression he had worn for so long fell away and in its place was a look I would never have expected to see. It was the saintly expression of the most devout and God-fearing monk. It was a look of love.

Yes – love! He could not have looked more fondly at those repulsive creatures had he been looking at his own children. Why did I have to witness this latest bout of madness? I swear that had I been able to move I would have beaten him over the head and thrown him headlong into the sea to join his beloved slime-monsters.

PART THE FIFTH

XXVI

My uncle turned from the sea and slumped to the deck. At first I thought he had finally joined the rest of the crew in death, but, no, he was sleeping.

I thought I could not contain my anger, that it was so strong no spell could hold it. Yet I remained locked in stillness, silently hurling abuse at his sleeping face.

What right had he got to sleep? What right had he got to wear that peaceful look on his face when we lay all about him, dead before our time? And all because of his spite and that accursed crossbow!

I hated him then. I burned with the hating of him. He slept on and I was forced to watch him, my eyes wide open, always, always open. The night seemed to darken by degrees and I felt so alone, so bitterly alone. I cursed him over and over again.

I begged my arms to move, my legs to shift, so that I could at least crawl across the deck and cause him some kind of pain. He could still feel pain, I knew that. Let me hurt him.

But none of my prayers were listened to. None of my begging caused a single change in the fabric of that nightmare. My uncle slept on and I could do nothing.

The first drop of rain hit the deck like a cannonball, it was so unexpected. Then another fell, and another. One struck me on the face, though I didn’t feel it. One hit my open eye and I suffered no pain. I didn’t even blink.

Soon the sound of the rain was deafening as it raked across the deck and the dead, drumming the faces of the crew and my sleeping uncle alike. I heard it passing through the air like arrows. I heard each drop as it splashed against canvas, wood, rope and flesh.

The night was filled to bursting with the sound of it. Water flowed over the dry decks and dribbled into the hold. It dripped from sodden sails and into empty barrels and buckets, the metallic notes sounding as loud as a peal of cathedral bells.

It flowed over the faces of my dead comrades – it hammered against their open eyes and trickled into their mouths and over their lolling jaws. It soaked their hair. It drenched their clothes until they clung to the unmoving muscles beneath.

I thought my ears would explode with the sound of it and wondered if my eyes could stand the constant onslaught as I stared out, my vision blurred by the pounding rain.

My uncle finally awoke. How he had slept so long was a wonder in itself. He looked about him in amazement, licking the rainwater from his moustache and beard. He picked up a nearby bowl and poured the contents into his mouth, savouring each drop as though it was the finest wine in all the world.

I saw the suspicion on his face at first. Was he dreaming? Was he dead? And then there was a great roaring in the distance. Lightning flashed far off and thunder rolled like drums. A storm was coming and the sails began to shift.

The sailcloth bulged and billowed like the clouds beyond them. The rigging creaked as the ropes took the strain and the deck boards flexed as the ship began to move off.

The strange thing was that the wind from the storm never touched us. Not one single strand of my uncle’s hair was moved. What filled those sails I couldn’t say, any more than I could tell you what strange spirits now flew through the rigging.

They were like some flying cousins of the luminous things that had surrounded us in the sea. They too glowed, but with a white or golden light, and they flitted here and there among the sails. It was like the stars had dropped and were dancing around the mast tops.

Meanwhile, the storm roared angrily in the distance but still not a breath of breeze moved over us. The rain still fell straight down, soaking everything below.

The black cloud that was above – the source of this deluge – moved to starboard a little and out came the moon again. And then CRACK – down came a bolt of lightning, without a flicker or a fork, straight into the ocean ahead of us.

Again, the lightning came. It lit the scene with a harsh and sudden light, a scene that had looked vile enough in daylight, but which gained a new level of shock when blasted with this merciless light. Again. And again, imprinting itself upon my mind. Each flash worse than the one before, but I could not close my eyes!

Each shock of light was seared into my eyes and flashed into my mind to live on as a ghostly afterglow when darkness flooded back.

Then there was a groan. And what a groan it was! It came from every body that lay around and all at once, as though there was only one set of lungs and only one throat, and it came from me too.

It came from me too!

It sounded like it rumbled up from the bowels of the earth and the depths of the ocean. Each one of us who had fallen now stirred – as though the power of the lightning had worked some kind of magic on us and urged our dead muscles back to some kind of life.