Wake of the Bloody Angel (15 page)

He paused, and the crowd cheered and clicked knives again.

Impressed, I leaned close to Jane and asked, “He really wrote this?”

“Shh,” she replied.

He gestured behind him. “Now, lads, let us claim your imaginations. Envision on this tiny deck the great
Bloody Angel,
and its legendary captain, Black Edward Tew, sailing his very first course as captain.”

He stepped aside, and the sail curtain drew back to reveal an actor dressed, presumably, as Black Edward. He wore a black wig that lagged behind whenever he turned his head, and so needed constant adjusting. He stood at a makeshift prop wheel and gazed dramatically into the distance.

“Tew” said, “Here I stand on the deck of the
Bloody Angel,
master of my fate. Somewhere on the sea before me lies the first ship I will conquer as a member of the Brotherhood of the Surf—” Here a few cheers made him pause. “—and the first step on the path that will take me back to my beloved as a wealthy man worthy of her. Then, by heaven and ocean, we shall claim an island and live like royalty!”

I looked around. My shipmates were rapt.

“Captain Tew!” a sailor playing a sailor cried as he rushed onstage. “We have sighted a simple cargo ship. Shall we raise the black flag?”

Tew turned his profile to the audience and pointed his chin. “We shall, but make certain no member of our crew strikes the first blow. If they do not resist us, we will not harm them. We are after plunder, not blood.”

“Plunder not blood, aye,” said the sailor before rushing off.

Tew paced before the prop wheel and struck a pose, fists on hips. “I crave plunder only, for back ashore awaits a girl who has claimed my heart as sure as I will claim this ship’s gold. Even now she strides the desolate dunes as I do this quarterdeck, hoping to glimpse my sail, and whether it be now or doomsday, I
will
return to her a rich man.”

This soliloquy was followed by the sailor’s return. “Captain Tew, the ship’s crew dares to fight back! What shall we do?”

Again more to the audience than to his fellow actor, Tew said, “If they dare to draw steel, then steel they shall draw! Arm every man, and tell them it shall be—”

He drew his sword, raised it aloft, and cried, “Gold, glory, or the cold embrace of the sea!”

The audience, including Jane and Clift, shouted the line along with him. Many shook their fists or waved weapons in the air. At that moment, I wondered how many really considered themselves
ex
pirates.

The sailor followed Tew offstage, and the curtain closed to end the scene.

Men rustled behind the curtain, and when it rose again, it showed a captain’s cabin. Tew sat in a chair, while another actor, hands bound, stood between two “guards.”

Tew said, “So, Captain. You have fought, and you have lost. Now we will take what we wish, and send your ship to the bottom of the ocean.”

“Pirate dog!” snarled the actor playing the other captain; he was a much better performer. “You do not know from whom you steal!”

Tew leaped to his feet and again stood with his hands on his hips. “I do not care from whom I steal! The ocean is mine, mine and my fellows’, and its bounty is ours for the taking!” He paused elaborately. “I am sorry you must lose your ship, for I hate to do unnecessary mischief, but you fought when you should have surrendered. And
you
are the dog here, and so are all those who put themselves under the laws wealthy men have made for their own security. Would it not be better for you and your crew to join us, rather than sneak after these villains for employment?”

The other captain said, “I took an oath to be loyal to my king and my country.”

Tew spun with flouncy, theatrical outrage. “An oath! It is not what you swear, Captain, but to whom you swear it! I am a free man, and I have as much right to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred ships and a thousand men in the field!”

This speech drew another cheer.

Just then the sailor returned and cried, “Captain, you won’t believe it! This is no mere merchant vessel, but a treasure ship!”

In gigantic, exaggerated surprise, Tew cried, “What?”

“King Clovis’s well- guarded treasure fleet was a decoy.” He held up a small wooden chest filled with fake gold coins. “
This
ship carries the crown jewels and treasury of Witigan!”

“No!” cried the defeated captain. “You’ll not touch my king’s treasure!” Suddenly free, he leaped toward Tew with an extralarge stage knife.

“Watch out!” someone screamed from the audience.

The same drunken sailor who’d earlier dropped his knife stood up and threw the blade at the stage combatants. “I’ll save ye, Cap’n Tew!” he cried before falling across the men seated in front of him. The knife struck the enemy captain in the behind.

“Ow! Fuck!” cried the unfortunate actor. He pulled the knife from his ass and glared out at the crowd, squinting against the lantern light. “Who threw that? By thunder, I’ll feed you to the seagulls! Who was it!”

Clift stood and gestured at the knife thrower, who was now sprawled on the deck. “Get him out of here. Lash him to something until he sobers up.”

Two seamen jumped to obey. The knife thrower struggled, mumbling, “I’m not drunk, they ain’t made the liquor that can unsober me. . . .”

Onstage, the captain’s guards led the actor away as blood spread on his trousers. I’d finally get to see if piss really got out the stain.

When the audience settled back down, Tew stepped to the edge of the stage and raised a single gold coin to the sky. “I am now rich,” he declared, “and at last I can return to my beloved! Set course for Watchorn Harbor, men, with as much canvas as she’ll take!”

The curtain drew across the scene, and there was restrained applause; no one wanted to inspire a repeat of the knifethrowing. When the curtain opened again, the props were gone. A single figure stood onstage: a girl, wearing a wig of thick wavy hair and the dress of a tavern wench. I got chills as I realized who she was supposed to be.

“There is no sign of my beloved,” she said. By her Kenoshan accent I recognized her as one of Celia Zandry’s rigging crew, a girl named Linda Shoji who navigated the spars and lines with the agility of a spider. But she was a much better actor than Tew, and no one spoke or moved around as she performed. She’d never met Angelina, and looked nothing like her, but the plaintive desperation in her voice matched that in Angelina’s the day she told me her story.

“I have waited so long for him,” she said. “I know he would return to me if he could, and since he does not, it must mean that he has met his end on the great waters. Therefore I have no choice but to join him. The land holds nothing for me but heartbreak and loneliness; I shall try my luck with the sea.”

And then, to the collective gasp of us all, she ran to the rail and jumped off the ship. The real ship, not the pretend one. Several men started up to go after her, but other hands pulled them back down, assuring them it was part of the act.

The curtain closed yet again, and Seaton stepped back onstage. He said grimly, “Thus far, with ragged quill in hand, your humble author—” He indicated himself. “—has pursued the story. On a little ship sailed by lusty men, seeking and finding the true course of their glory. Black Edward Tew never reached his destination, and now sleeps with his gold in the icy depths, while the girl from Watchorn Harbor pines for his embrace.” He shrugged, self-deprecating and yet somehow dignified. “And so, for their sake, in your fair minds let this acceptance take.”

The curtain opened, and Tew stood there, head down. When he looked up, the audience gasped. His skin was painted white, with big crude circles of black turning his eyes into the deep sockets of a skull. It was surprisingly eerie. When he spoke, his singsongy cadence changed to an ethereal monotone.

“I lie in the deep now, with my treasure, safe from all. And yet my spirit does not rest, will not rest,
can
not rest. Not until the day my true love joins me in this cold, dark kingdom for all eternity. . . .”

He lowered his head and backed out of the light. In the darkness, a stringed instrument began to play and a plaintive voice sang,

The sea refuses no soul

All are welcome in its waves

To wait in the deep and cold

Curled up in watery graves.

Suddenly someone behind me screamed. The real kind. We followed his pointing finger to where a lone lantern illuminated a feminine figure standing far behind the stage near the stern. Battling impulses of relief that the girl hadn’t really jumped overboard and goose bumps at her creepy appearance left me speechless. Like Tew’s, her skin was painted white and black encircled her eyes. She looked like a genuine apparition.

The footlights began to go out one at a time. Squinting, I saw a black-clad figure crawling along the stage, snuffing the lamps as he went. The singer continued:

When love binds two as one

The trough as well as crest

Embrace them for all time

And that’s no lover’s caress.

At last, only the girl’s lamp remained. Tew appeared beside her, they embraced, and then everything went dark.

There was a moment of total silence. Only the creaking ship and cresting waves made any sound. In the distance, the plaintive cry of a whale seemed to provide the perfect coda for what we’d just seen.

Then the crew burst into genuine, rapturous applause. The cast took their bows, and the loudest response was saved for Seaton. He absorbed it with the graciousness of a man who knows exactly how good his work is.

chapter TWELVE

Everyone
stayed on deck murmuring about the play, not wanting to break the mood. The actor who played Tew came from behind the curtain minus his black wig and accepted congratulations and swigs of rum. Someone threw a bucket of water on the knife-throwing drunk and he sat up sputtering, fighting the ropes that lashed him to the mast.

Linda Shoji appeared, still wiping the white paint from her face. Instead of the applause Tew got, though, the men stepped back and stared as if she were really the ghost she’d pretended to be. She stopped, stared, and chuckled.

“There was a ladder hanging over the side,” she said. “It wasn’t that hard to grab. Ya bunch of babies.”

After a moment’s pause, they applauded. She grinned, shook her head, and accepted a mug of rum from one of them.

Jane took my arm and pulled me aside. “I just had a thought,” she said softly.

“And you need me to rub your temples until the pain goes away?”

“Now who’s being the smart-ass? Just listen. Only one person survived the sinking of the
Bloody Angel,
right? Wendell Marteen, the first mate.”

“That’s the assumption.”

“But what if it wasn’t Marteen? What if it was someone who just used his name?”

It took a moment for me to process this. “You think Marteen is really Tew?”

“I think it’s possible. I mean, he was a pirate for exactly one attack, so it’s not like a lot of people would recognize him. All the stories about him grew up after he supposedly died. Hell, if I’m right, maybe he started all the stories himself, creating his own myth.” She paused. “And if he deliberately sank the ship, then he had a motive for pretending to be someone else.”

“Why would he do that? It was loaded with treasure.”

“Was it?” I couldn’t see her face, but nevertheless I knew she was smiling. “How do we know? If he sank an empty ship in water too deep to recover it, he could say anything had been on board.”

“But didn’t the whole crew die, too?”

Again, I could feel her sarcastic half smile even though I couldn’t see it. “He was a pirate, Eddie. He might have regretted it, but it wouldn’t stop him. Ever hear of Captain Beardsley, the Grim Teacher? They called him that because he could always show people a new way to die. Anyway, his crew had gotten so big, the shares were tiny, so one night he deliberately ran his ship aground where he had a launch waiting. He escaped; his crew either drowned or were captured.”

I nodded. Then a problem hit me. “If he did hide his treasure somewhere else before he sank the
Bloody Angel,
then why has he come back to being a pirate now?”

“Who knows? Maybe he spent all his money. Maybe he got bored. Maybe he got married and his goddamn wife won’t stop gambling and whoring. We’ll ask him when we see him.” She lightly punched my shoulder. “So? What do you think?”

“I think I’m going to bed. It’s late, and I’m tired. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” I punched her back, turned, and headed for the main hatch.

“If I’m right, I still get the treasure, right?” she whispercalled after me.

“All yours, Jane,” I assured her as I descended into the hold.

In the dark outside my cabin, I noticed something in the corner. I squinted until I could make out the curled-up shape of the cabin boy. “Dorsal?”