The Dead Men Stood Together (9 page)

They say that blood is thicker than water, but in that instance I had more fellow feeling for that dead albatross than I had for my uncle. I wished with all my heart that he had never walked into my life.

No one spoke. In fact, no one seemed to breathe for fear that an exhaled breath might be seen as some sign of an objection. But there was to be no objection.

‘Lang,’ said the captain, ‘fetch some rope and make a noose.’

My uncle renewed his struggles but there were too many men holding him. He stamped on someone’s foot, and the ship’s carpenter stepped forward and hit him in the stomach with one of his huge fists.

‘Be still,’ he said. ‘Tie his hands.’

My uncle gasped and winced and spat on the floor, but he made no further attempt to escape. Where could he escape to, in any case?

The rope was fetched and knotted and someone was sent to tie the other end to the yardarm. The noose was passed down and down until it dangled above my uncle’s head. He looked at it and cursed loudly.

The captain fetched my uncle’s crossbow, which was still lying on the deck where he had dropped it. I thought perhaps he had changed his mind and was intending to shoot my uncle rather than hang him.

Instead, he lifted it over his head and crashed it against the mast with such force that the whole crew flinched. The crossbow shattered into several pieces that scattered across the deck.

The captain stared at the pieces for a moment, took a deep breath and sighed.

‘Fetch that barrel,’ he said.

A barrel was grabbed and turned and rolled over towards my uncle and the group who held him. It was righted and set down beneath the noose.

‘Get him up,’ said the captain.

‘No!’ shouted my uncle. ‘You have no right!’

‘When the noose is round your neck,’ said the captain wearily, ignoring him, ‘I will kick the barrel away and I’ll do my best to kick it hard and quick so you might break your neck, but I can’t promise anything. Do you have any last words?’

My uncle stared at the captain, his eyes twitching back and forth.

‘May you all rot in hell!’ he hissed.

‘I think we already are,’ said the captain. ‘Put a hood over his head. I don’t want to see his face when he chokes.’

A bag was fetched and roughly hauled over my uncle’s face and muffled curses rang out from under it. The group holding him lifted up his legs and tried to get his feet on to the barrel, but he kicked the barrel over.

‘Tie his legs,’ said the captain. ‘If he kicks after that, then break them.’

More rope was fetched and two men went about tying his ankles together. When they were finished, they tried again to get my uncle up on top of the righted barrel.

But just as they were doing this, I noticed something incredible. It was so incredible that I did not even grasp at first the full meaning of what I was seeing. And I was not the only one.

‘Wait!’ shouted the captain, as the carpenter was about to kick the barrel away. ‘Look!’

Many of us were already looking at the shadow of the noose swaying on the deck, and the shadow of my uncle beneath it. Every face was a portrait of amazement. The mist had gone!

The sailors dropped my uncle to the deck and he scurried backwards on his backside until he reached the side of the ship.

But we ignored him now entirely. We were all gazing at the wonderful view of open ocean and wide horizon, the cloud-flecked blue sky and bright sun.

Every heart lifted at the sight. We forgot all about the albatross and all thoughts of executing its killer. We were too happy to let such terrible thoughts into our heads. We were free. Truly free. We had escaped the curse at last.

It was like being blind for years and then having your sight given back in a second. It was some time before I remembered my uncle, who had shuffled away from his would-be killers and was huddled at the far end of the ship, the hood now only partially covering his face.

The captain started to rally the crew to get to work and, taking a knife from a sheath on his waist, he walked over to my uncle and cut the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles.

My uncle snatched the hood from his face and looked up at the captain and the other members of the crew who, like me, had started to wander across to where he lay.

‘Get up,’ said the captain. ‘No man shall harm you. If they do, they shall answer to me.’

‘Why?’ asked my uncle, looking suspiciously from face to face.

‘We are free of the mist,’ said the captain.

My uncle peered up at the sky, blinking, clearly not having noticed until the captain pointed it out.

‘It is a day for celebration not killing. Be thankful.’

‘Be thankful?’ said my uncle. ‘You would have hanged me without a care. And now you –’

‘I’m sure I can find some men to toss you overboard if you want,’ said the captain. ‘Thank your lucky stars that we are in better spirits and keep your peace.’

The captain turned away and started giving orders. The crew jumped to their tasks with an enthusiasm that spoke of their days of boredom and belied the weakness that they all felt through lack of food and discomfort.

Eventually it was just me and my uncle. When his eyes met mine, I could not hold his gaze and climbed gratefully when the captain ordered me to the topsails. To be up there with the sun and the wind and the white sails billowing! I felt reborn.

XVIII

I made no further effort to seek out my uncle. At first I felt disloyal, but very quickly I felt nothing at all. I told myself that his troubles were of his own making and there was nothing to be gained by my taking sides with him.

Occasionally he would emerge from the hold as though stepping out of his own tomb, each time looking paler and thinner and less like the man I had known at the start of the voyage, less like a man at all.

The disgust of the rest of the crew was so strong you could feel it in the air. But my uncle seemed not to notice. Or, if he did notice, he made sure not to show it. It was as if the crew had actually killed him and he was haunting them. He was a constant reminder of the loss of the albatross and of their own murderous rage.

But the sun shone after so many days of grey mist. The effect of its rays on the crew was startling to see. The sullenness evaporated along with every trace of moisture in the ship.

It had been so long since we had glimpsed the world unfiltered through the fog that it seemed newly made. Every grain of the timbers stood out in pin-sharp detail. Muted colours now gleamed. The sails hurt your eyes to look at them, they were so bright.

The mood of the ship lifted and the breeze become a good strong wind at our backs. It slapped against the canvas of the mainsails and made the rigging creak and twang like fiddle strings as they fought to rein it in. Foam scudded on the wave crests.

The temperature began to climb and climb with the clear air. The ice world and mist seemed quickly to be a thing of the past. The wet timbers of the ship began to steam and layers of clothing were shed one by one.

Our pleasure at being under blue skies was not strained by the uncomfortable heat. We had only to recall the freezing cold or the creeping, whispering mist and any heat seemed bearable when it came out of clear bright skies.

The sunshine warmed us through, right through – even to our very hearts – and for the first time in what seemed an age a song broke out and we all joined in. Whatever dangers these oceans had to offer, they might be good sailor’s dangers – dangers we knew and could battle with. Or so we hoped.

I was singing out with gusto if not much melody when I saw my uncle emerging from the blackness of the hold into the shadow of the mainsail, and he seemed like some leftover particle of the gloom and ice we had escaped.

One by one the men around me saw him too, and as each man saw him they stopped singing as I had done, and, as they stopped, others further off stopped too and craned their necks to try to glimpse what it was that had caused the song to falter.

I did not know what reaction there would be to my uncle’s appearance, but never in the world did I think that the captain would step forward and clap him on the back. My uncle flinched, preparing for another lynching.

‘Now then, lads,’ said the captain to the crew. ‘What’s done is done and we are safely into open waters. Let’s all be glad and let bygones be bygones. What do you say?’

This was greeted by silence and most of the men had their eyes cast down, studying the deck. But after a while, one by one, they muttered in agreement. There seemed to be no stomach now for any bad feeling. No one wanted to jinx our new good fortune with ill thoughts. Luck could be curdled by such things; every sailor knew it.

This didn’t mean that my uncle was carried round the ship shoulder high. He was still mostly ignored – because the crew no doubt harboured feelings of guilt and shame about what they had been about to do.

We all went about our work as the fine breeze filled our sails and hope filled our hearts. Gradually, hour by hour, my uncle, working alongside them, was accepted back into the crew on equal terms. And not just when we worked.

The men began to nod at him when he walked past. They did not deliberately walk away from him as they had before. They would even choose to sit beside him occasionally. They were trying, in their way, to make amends.

It may have begun as a grudging forgiveness but it soon became more – much more. No one looks for meaning in signs and portents as keenly as a mariner. And it had not escaped anyone’s notice that moments after the albatross was shot, the fearful mist had dissolved and we were blown into good clear seas and open skies.

Perhaps the albatross had been a demon in disguise. Perhaps it had cast a spell over the crew to distract them from their fate.

‘Who’s to say that the albatross wasn’t keeping us in that mist?’ said a sailor standing in a group beside me one day.

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ said another.

‘No,’ said yet another, pushing forward. ‘He’s right. Our luck changed when the bird was killed.’

‘Aye,’ said the first. ‘I think maybe that bird was some kind of evil spirit. Something that had us bewitched.’

A huge mariner from the far north of Scotland smacked his mighty hand against the mast.

‘Aye!’ he growled. ‘He was right to shoot it!’

To my surprise, a great murmur of assent went up and down the ship as this theory was finally accepted by one and all. My uncle, who had been standing nearby in the shade of the mainsails, stepped forward warily, blinking into the sunlight.

I could see that he was as surprised as I was when a great gaggle of the crew gathered about him, slapping him and cheering him and wanting to have some contact with him, as though it was he now, and not the albatross, who was the source of good fortune. Such is the fickleness and foolishness of superstition.

Though I shook my head a little with wonder at the about-turn of the crew, still I was glad of it. If the crew felt ashamed of their actions, then I felt more so, for I had a duty of kinship. I joined in the cheers and tried to put the past behind me.

A wide smile appeared on my uncle’s face for the first time in an age, and for a while it seemed almost as if the clock had been turned back and we were all as we were at the beginning of the voyage.

It was a dream of course. Nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same again.

XIX

So it was that my uncle found himself actually welcomed by the crew. It was astonishing to see. Each day brought hearty claps on his back from young and old, and, though confused at first, when he learned their meaning, he was happy to agree that his actions had been the saving of the ship.

My uncle might not have been telling his stories any more, but he was only too happy to be the hero of this one, however unlikely a hero he might be.

I still felt the shame of having not cried out to stop his hanging and, though he said nothing, I was sure he must hate me for it.

He gave no sign of any bitterness, however. He had recovered some of his old good cheer and swagger, but I didn’t altogether believe in it, any more than I believed that his killing of the bird had been the saving of the ship. Or that, even if it had, that had been his intention when he pulled the trigger.

But this made me feel guilty too. Was I being unfair? Maybe my uncle had genuinely felt the bird to be an evil presence. Maybe he really was a hero and I was refusing to give him credit.

The good wind blew and we sailed on, confident that we would eventually make landfall and have a chance to pick up some provisions of fresh food and water. All would be well. We had been plucked from the mouth of hell and I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to make my peace with my uncle.

I went down into the far reaches of the hold where I knew he often took himself when not at work. It seemed the approval of the crew didn’t mean he wanted to spend any more time than necessary in their company.

The hold was so dark after the brightness of the daylight above that it was like blindness to step into its gloom. I cursed loudly as I cracked my shin against some unseen obstacle as I fumbled my way, searching for him in the darkness.