The Ephemera (25 page)

Even as the inkwell rocked.

Even as the needle glinted in the sun.

Even as the Captain mumbled and trumbled to himself about
insurance
, and even as the music skittered a jolly accompaniment to the greatest amount of pain Roger had ever felt in his life.

It seems that the music is leading him on a more complicated journey than expected. But all stories have their twists and turns, don't they?

"Ho!" The sailors now shout in unison.

A bearded bear of a man, arms swarthy with black hair and—Roger squirms—
tattoos
steps forward. "Always said the Captain's a generous man." He dribbles as he sings. "There's seconds, long as the boy can stand. We'll teach him the pirates' life!"

"Ho! Ho!" The sailors shout and clap.

"You'll needs to be quick to dip your wick." This is a half-sized man with half a nose and fewer than half his teeth. "This greeny's likely to be sick on his first taste of pirates' strife."

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" The sailors shout, clap and stamp. The deck resounds.

"An orderly queue, lads. Ready your pricks." This third sailor is a negro with raised patterns of scars on his cheeks and arms. His voice is deep as a gravel pit. "We'll all have a pop at the Captain's chick. We'll make him a pirate's wife!"

The music roils like turbulent water as they advance, and Roger knows he's in trouble. Not only for what these men are about to do to him, but because the last thing the Captain said to him with a light, but painful, tap on the bottom was, "
Now son. Beware. If you value your hide out there. Keep your britches up at any price, and let no-one clap eyes on that decorated derriere.
"

Roger edges back towards the Captain's cabin, but the door remains firmly shut. The sailors close in. They're smiling, but that just makes it worse.

"Belay!"

Roger has never been more relieved to see a face than he is when Angelo's beetrooting fizzog pops out of the crowd like one of Ma Hutton's piles.

"Belay!" the old man bellows again. "And stand ye fast. Lest ye wants to feel the lash. The Captain's put his mark on this one, so hear me.
Stand. Ye. Fast.
"

Roger doesn't know how much authority old Angelo carries with the other sailors, but his words, while giving rise to a great deal of grumbling and swearing, appear to have done little to douse the hunger in the sailors' eyes or stop their encroachment.  For a moment it looks as though the only change Angelo's incursion has made will be to give the men something to vent their frustrated fists on while they wait for their turn of Roger's arse.

Then the music intercedes, a soaring flourish of strings and horns and a clamour of watchman's bell, and clear above it all, a Nordic accent singing. "Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!"

"Ship ahoy?" echo the men. "Ship ahoy?"

"Be she riding high or low?" the negro shouts up to the crow's nest.

"Low as a pregnant horse in snow," comes the reply. "Fat with booty, and pond'rous slow. She's for the taking, but the wind's ashift so if we're to take her now is the time to go."

"Then what are you standing around for?" The Captain has emerged. He's wearing a braided jacket and a battered tricorn, and there's a manic glow sheening his face. "If the man says, go—then go!"

And Roger is forgotten as the men leap to their assigned positions and the Ship erupts in activity. Sheets are hauled, booms are swung, sails trimmed and shanties sung as the vessel slews to starboard, picks up speed and homes in on its prey.

Roger watches, impressed by the orchestrated intricacy of it all. The pain and danger are all but forgotten as the music blares into a glorious, majestic stomp. Sailors swarm the rigging in symmetrical conjunctions, singing, "Hey, boys, feel the wind in your face. A-giving the pirates life. Carries us on with the scent of the chase. We're living the pirates' life. This is the
pi-rates'
life."

Roger turns to Angelo. "You're pirates!" he whispers.

The old man dissembles, despite the overwhelming evidence. "Nay, lad, buccaneers..."

"You're pirates!" Roger persists.

Angelo's old face is reddening again. "No, son,
privateers
..."

The bear and the negro have thrown open the hold, and the ugly half-pint is dishing out burlap sacks to his colleagues. All eyes are on the other ship. It's close enough now to see the urgency in the scurrying white uniforms as it tacks once, and then again. But any attempt to escape the music is futile.

Avarice shines in the eyes of the pursuers like the anticipation of a holy miracle. "Hey, lads, hear the chink of the coin. Ye'll be counting afore it's night. A flash of a skirt and a bump in yer loin? These'll be ours by right. This is the
pi-rates'
life."

The refrain is infectious. Roger's fingers tick to its leery sway. The Ship's quarry, the music tells him, is more than likely laden with goods that will sell at port for ten times their value just to make some wiggy merchant even richer than he already is. He'll collect on his insurance from Lloyds of London and grumble at the inconvenience, but really he deserves his loss.

"We're
pirates
!" Roger climbs up on a barrel. "Living fast and free!"

Angelo goggles at him.

"We're pirates. Monarchs of the sea!"

Angelo places his hand on his arm. "Lad, when you say
we
...?"

Roger grins. "I mean
me
! For now it's clear to see that I was born for piracy. It's what I'm meant to be." He sees it all now. A shift, a gift, just as the music promised. His course is set now. The Captain has marked him and he's bound to the fortunes of the Ship.

The other ship is close enough to see the occupants' faces. It tacks once again, a clumsy manoeuvre intended to keep its flank out of reach, but it won't work. The waiting pirates check their pistols, their powder and their piteous blades. A great rumble passes underfoot. Roger jumps down from his barrel, rushes to the side, looks down to see the black snouts of cannons emerging from the side of the vessel.

The music executes a military pause, like the stretched seconds that precede a gallows drop. The tension rolls out on a side drum, with a precise piccolo hornpipe lark-high above it as the pirates sing, "Hey, gents, feel the whet of the fight, sharpening the pirate's knife. Watch 'em run, the cowardly shites. Ain't it a marvellous sight? This is the
pi-rates'
life."

Then the cannons fire and the other ship is cloaked in smoke and falling debris, and the music is God's own riot. Roger's head rings with the noise of it, the thrill of it.

When the smoke clears the decks of the other ship are so close you could spit on them. It's complete chaos. Roger sees sailors frantically organising to repel boarders. Their efforts are hampered by the flock of panicked sheep that have been released by the cannon fire, likewise the flustering chickens and worst of all the demands of the outraged passengers.

The mood on the ship is not helped when the line-up of pirates begin to sing a lilting barcarolle in close harmony. "Stab, slash, burn and shoot. This is the pirates' life! Rake, rape, plunder, loot. This is the pirates' life!" As they repeat the refrain they begin a sinister dance that involves much baring of teeth and brandishing of steel. Over this, the pirates in the rigging, readying their boarding ropes, carry on the original theme.

"Hey, men, see the fear in those eyes? Wild and wide and white. Cut 'em down to size. Not a one left alive. This is the pirates' life. This is the
pi-rates'
life."

"Stab, slash, burn and shoot," chorus Roger and Angelo.

"This is the pirates' life...all right!" sings the Captain as he launches himself, the apex of a delta of swinging sailors that cross the narrowing water like a flock of avenging geese. The second this vanguard lands on the opposite deck the ring of clashing steel rings out, and this is the signal for the employment of grapples and gaffs to bind the two ships together, for boarding planks to slam down and—"Rake, rape, plunder, loot!"—the rest of the pirates to swarm across.

The fight does not last long. The music helter-skelters to a climax that sees the Captain, acrobatically balanced on the foc'sle rail, a grin on his face, a cutlass in each hand, fencing with the skipper of the other vessel and three of his men. With a swing and a leap, two of the charging lackeys tumble over the side. With a casual flick of his off-hand, the Captain opens up the gut of the remaining sailor, and as the other captain attempts to flee there's a rush of strings followed by an orchestral thump that sees the man pinned to his own mast by the Captain's dead-eyed throw.

There is a pause, during which everyone turns to see the quivering sword, the bloodstained whites, the Captain, hands on cocked hips, laughing. The sailors throw down their weapons and the pirates cheer their victory. Roger too.

It doesn't take long for the conquerors to go about the serious business of stripping the vanquished ship and making their return. The mood is buoyant. One of the passing pirates ruffles Roger's hair. All are focused on the sacks being lined up beside the hold, and no attention is paid to the other ship, drifting away now, trailing black smoke into the blue sky and dripping flaming wreckage and the last remaining sailors into the sea.

"What's the haul?" The Captain's voice recaptures Roger's attention once more.

"What's the haul?" Someone else cries, and the shout is repeated by all the returning pirates. "What's the haul?" And one by one they open their sacks, show them off to their shipmates before dumping them into the hold.

"Doubloons" Coins spill from a chest. "Spoons!" A silver cutlery service follows them.

"Huzzah for the pirate's life!" cheer the pirates.

"Shiny!" The contents of  jewellery box sparkle in the sun like jellied candies. "Winy!" A crate of booze is handled with considerably more care.

"Huzzah for the pirate's life!"

"Meats!" A violently squirming sack clucks as it is chucked down the hole, followed by three live sheep. "Treats!" A tray of pastries from the galley does not make it as far as the hold.

"Huzzah for the pirate's life!" This is mumbled through mouthfuls of flaky crumbs.

"A bit of slap." Two terrified women, girls really, not much older than Roger are the last to go down the hold. "A dose of clap!" someone suggests wryly, gaining a round of laughter.

And Roger, caught up in the music, wants to contribute too. "A treasure map!" His voice is so clean and clear that it cuts through everything.

Everyone looks at him.

The sailors stare, curious, hungry, nowhere near yet sated by their haul. Angelo has vanished, and beneath the tricorn the Captain's grin is gone. His face is sickly pale, his eyes burn into Roger, willing him to say not a word more, but the music compels him to finish. "Tucked inside the Captain's cap!"

The music then does something sleek and difficult to describe. It inverts itself, as if the order of the world has been turned upside down. And Roger realises too late—as the still-bloody cutlasses are drawn once more—that this is exactly what has happened. The pirates' faces are alive now with cunning as they round on their leader.

"This," they sing, and the music now is full of menace. "Is the
pi-rates'
life."

~

Cast Adrift

After the longest, coldest night Roger has ever known, the sky at last begins to relax towards dawn. Roger hears it in the music before he is really certain that he sees it, a high stringed shimmer surfacing from the lazy churn of cellos and basses that has been meandering back and forth all through the night; aimless, tuneless and refusing to resolve into any kind of a melody as the leaky little boat bobbed through the darkness. The light on the horizon, intensifies, focuses into a red spot, an orange arc, and finally becomes the rising sun. Roger sighs with relief. The ethereal violins sweep into a familiar melody.

"I sense a gift," Roger sings along.

Sitting behind him, the Captain grunts.

"No, I see a shift." Roger finds the Captain's unwillingness to appreciate the potential of the music frustrating. After all that has happened, the music is all they have left to depend on. "I see the dawn, a new day of adventure. I see the compass just waiting to send us sailing free. I see. Something special for you and me."

"
You see?
" The Captain's words are salted with bitterness. "Are you talking the piss?"

Roger doesn't turn round. The memory of what the pirates did to their Captain's eyes to punish him for keeping secrets—the sunset glow of the hot iron and the screams—is bad enough. Such is the justice of the pirates' life. Those who would seek treasure and not share and share alike as the Code demands are stripped of their map and robbed of their sight, and sent out to make their own way to find it if they can. If the pirates had known that the boy who had blabbed the secret—who they had chucked in with the one who had hoarded it as an afterthought—had a copy of the map inked across his own arse cheeks they would have howled with laughter at the irony.

As the day stretches across the water, Roger spies a humped silhouette. The outline of an island. His breath catches. He knew the music would not let him down. The horns salute in acknowledgement, and Roger feels the current tug the boat compliantly in that direction.

"I feel a shift," Roger repeats, forgetting the despair of the long night, ignoring the sting of salt on his dry lips. "I hear a joke that'll have us in stitches. I sense a drift to an island of riches."

He hears the Captain scrabble to attention. "An island, you say?"

Roger smiles, and although the Captain did not sing his line, attempts to fit a rhyme into the music. "Aye, Sir. And the current's taking us that way." It's an awkward fit.

"Quick, boy, tell me." The Captain fumbles the oars into the water. "Does it have a mountain with two crowns? Does it have a narrow-mouthed lagoon at the eastern end, surrounded by jungle?"

"I..." The morning is just beginning to reveal the details. There is certainly a lot of greenery, but no sign of a lagoon. And, true, there is a sort of lumpy hill, but it is impossible to tell from this angle whether it might have two peaks. "I don't know," Roger sings, but the line feels orphaned.
Out of the music.