Captain Adam (33 page)

What met his gaze was surely one of the strangest sights any man ever beheld.

A f^ This was a large room: it must have taken up the entire top J^*~J story. Along three sides crumpled figures lay, figures that might have been piles of poked dust except for the faces.

You have looked into a bird's nest soon after a hatching to see that the little ones are all mouth, their eggshell heads, the scrawniness of their bodies being mere appendages to the overwhelmingly urgent part presented—their bills'? So it was here with the eyes. Adam scarcely saw the pale cheeks, the trembling lips, the hands each like a rickle of sticks, much less at first the leathern thongs, the staples, the pails, all the accumulated filth. He only saw the eyes—eyes that screamed in fear.

There was a dry rustling. The faces retreated from Adam for as far as they were able, and beat and bobbed against the wall, giant soft moths that, unlike ordinary moths, battered themselves in an effort to get away from the light.

There was a gibbering such as might have been made by monkeys. No words were distinguishable. This could hardly have been human'speech: it was frantic, whittled thin with fear; and it ceased abruptly when Adam, his heart pounding, stepped into the room.

Something was thrown around his knees, locking them together. Something batted his thigh.

"Cuftain Long, it's me! It's Lillian!"

He knelt by her, and put his arms around her, babbling words of reassurance.

Lil had been through hours of hysteria, possibly twelve minutes of true time by a clock. Thrust here by one who from her description must have been the man Adam had just disarmed, the big man, she'd had no more than the briefest conceivable glimpse of the room and its occupants. Then the door had been slammed and locked, leaving her in a darkness crowded with sibilant whispers, with soft squeals and scuffling. She had cringed beside the door, as far from those chittery sounds as she could get. An adult might well have gone mad then.

"I—I'm glad you're here."

"I'm glad I am, too, my beauteous." 204

"Where's Father and Mother?"

"Your father's gone for help. Your mother's baking a special pie for the party we're going to have when you get back."

He rose, and together they surveyed the prisoners. For these cocoons of squirming rag and skin were no nightmare: they were children. They were not many, or not as many as had at first seemed. Lillian had supposed that there were scores, perhaps hundreds; and even Adam had estimated them at thirty or more. By actual count, now, there were eleven. The oldest might have been fourteen, the youngest about Lil's age, six; though it was difficult to make estimates here, so shriveled were they, so sunken their cheeks, while their eyes watered and blinked, red in the unaccustomed light.

They pressed against the wall, against the floor, whimpering, curs that had been kicked and expected to be kicked again.

Lillian moved, if with timid step, toward them. She held out a hand.

"Don't be afraid," she pleaded, though her voice did quaver. "This is Captain Long. He's from America."

She couldn't have said anything worse. Oh, the cackling that came! Some of the children hid their faces, seeming to strive to dig a hole in the floor. Some, kneeling, vninging their hands, pleaded piteously not to be taken to the plantations.

Adam had placed the candle on the floor, and from its light their shadows swooped, bobbing, twisting, suddenly collapsing, to rise again, a grotesquerie of thin heads, bone-thin arms, shoulders that could have been porcupine quills. Those shadows suggested witches making queer invocative contortions.

"No, no," Adam called. "I'm not going to take you to America. I'm going to take you back to your mothers and fathers."

They did not believe him. They whimpered.

"Let's cut 'em loose first," Adam whispered to Lil, who nodded.

Now these children, weak though they were, feeble from their confinement, all were fettered. At regular intervals along the baseboard of three sides of the room—the door by which Adam had entered bisected the fourth wall—iron staples had been fixed. Each child had a small iron ring on his or her left ankle. Not chains, as in a dungeon, but tough round leathern thongs connected the irons with the staples. Each thong went through one staple and each end of it was fastened to a leg iron, so that when one child moved away from the wall the child at the other end of that thong was pulled closer to the wall. This allowed them a certain amount of liberty if they worked together. Either, for instance, could reach one of the wooden buckets or even the large wooden tub in the center of the room, provided that the other permitted it. But in no circumstances could any of them have reached the door.

The room was bare, and it looked uncommonly solid. The two windows, which were high, were strongly boarded. Even a man with a crowbar, and with something to stand on, would have required hours to open them. There was a second, much smaller door in the middle of the wall facing Adam—leading out, it would appear, into space, for here must have been the very back of the house—but this was bolted with a bar held in place by a huge padlock. There was no furniture, except the tub and the buckets. It was dry in the room, but cold.

When Adam started for the nearest child, a girl, she screamed and beat the floor. She must have supposed not that she was about to be killed but that she was about to be beaten. She'd been beaten before, and recently. Not daring to look up, with one hand she stripped off her sleazy dress—she wore no underclothes—and pointed to her back. It looked like raw veal. The welts crisscrossed, some coiling up over the spindly shoulders, others reaching as low as the bum.

"I won't hurt you— Tell her that, Lil," as though the Bingham child were an interpreter. "I just want to set you loose."

Done up in his flame-colored coat like this, he did not carry a sheath knife. He had only his sword, an awkward tool for a task like this, since the edge went scarcely one-third of the way down from the point, making it hard for Adam to get leverage without cutting his own hand. He sawed at the thong; while the girl, her eyes squinched shut, bent over, quivering, waiting for the first blow.

"Look out!"

Henry had crept into the room. He carried a long, lean, very bright knife. He didn't give fight when Adam turned. He simply ran. But he had the door closed and bolted before Adam could reach it.

"Now that was a fool's thing to do, to forget that—"

Louder, forcing a smile, he said: "So you see, now I'm locked in with you. But it's all right. We're all gcing to get out."

"My father's going to come and save us," said Lil Bingham. "Captain, here's Anne Lamson!"

"Good," said Adam. "Now let's cut these cords."

The thongs had been clawed and gnawed, and run back and forth through the staples, in an effort to sever them. It was for this, Adam was told—for they were beginning to talk now, beginning to look up, blinking, and especially since Anne Lamson had introduced Lillian—it was for these attempts to free themselves that they were most often whipped. Sometimes the men didn't even come into the room, the children told Adam. Sometimes they just stood on the threshold and pitched food in, or shoved in a water jug.

Didn't they ever empty those buckets or the tub? The children shook their heads. None of them had ever known this to happen. 206

Hacking the bonds away took a long time, and Adam fretted inwardly while he toiled, though he tried to keep a cheerful face, talking, encouraging the children to talk, promising them again and again that he wasn't going to drag them off to America.

What had happened to Hal Bingham? So many things could happen to a man alone in a London street near the river at night.

Nobody but Hal knew where this house was.

Now and then Adam would shush the children and stop his sword-sawing and hold up his head and listen. But there was no sound. The children told him that they never heard sounds from the street and seldom from the house itself. More than once, they said, they had tried screaming and yelling in chorus. There never had been any sort of answer. The kidnappers had not objected to these tactics, which argued that the kid-napj>ers were sure of themselves here.

So Adam worked, sweat rolling down his body, a lump of fear in his breast, but trying to keep up light talk.

Even after the children had regained confidence it was impossible to learn how long they had been here. They had no way of telling day from night, and apparently their feeding was not regular. Most of the newcomers were so badly scared, or sometimes so bruised and beaten, that they weren't sure what time it was, or even what day.

Two, Freddy and Phoebe, brother and sister, had an undisputed claim to seniority. They figured that they had been in this room for at least a month. They had been the only children here when Bully Bill was brought in, the one who caused all the trouble. Bully Bill, a small fellow, but fierce, had charged the kidnappers every time the door was opened. It didn't make any diflference how many times he was bashed, he always fought back. And when the leathern thongs and the staples were introduced. Bully Bill again and again tried to cut himself loose, though he knew what the men would do to him. Two other children had been in the room when Bully Bill was given his last beating, and they remembered it as clearly as Phoebe and Freddy did. The men had taken turns, hitting and hitting Bully Bill long after he ceased to move or to make any sound —for at least an hour afterward.

"Two hours," said Phoebe.

Adam, who had just cut the last thong, thought that he heard a noise downstairs. He went to the door. No. He had thought he heard a steady thud, a pxDunding sound: but he couldn't hear it now.

"What did they do with Bully Bill?" he asked quietly. "But don't tell me if you don't want to."

They wanted to all right. Bully Bill, they told him, had lain there for a long time—several days, they reckoned it—never moving or making a sound; and he had long before ceased to bleed.

"We used to call out to him and ask him to speak to us, but we couldn't get to him. He was on the other side of the room."

After a long while, after several more feedings anyway, the men had come into the room again instead of pitching the food in, and they'd examined Bully Bill. They had said some mighty dirty words, and looked scared, and they'd carried Bully Bill away.

"One of his eyes was hanging out," Freddy reported. "It'd been dug out by one of the sticks they hit him with, and it was hanging down from his head, swinging back and forth like a marble on the end of a piece of string."

"You— You reckon he was dead?" asked Phoebe.

Adam had gone again to the hall door. Truly he heard that thudding now. The sound seemed far away, and it was rhythmic, heavy.

"This the door where they carried him out?" he asked.

"No, no! It was that one over there. Where the padlock is. It goes out on a roof and they can get to a different house on another street. You're sure you ain't taking us to America, mister?"

"I'm sure of it," said Adam.

It occurred to him that unless the kidnappers had already decamped, abandoning their treasure of small slaves, they would try to escape by means of this route over a roof.

For by now the thumping was unmistakable. Somebody was smashing in the front door. Adam heard a familiar voice:

"Ho again, ho again! All right, lads, let's have a chantey!" I spit on you, You spit on me—

By this time Adam himself had joined in: Ain't no politeness On Scaredy-Cat Sea!

Adam smiled. He took off his coat and vest. He cleared away the buckets and the tub. He placed the children along the wall on either side of the hall door. He rolled up his sleeves.

"I think we're going to have visitors," he explained.

"You going to kill them. Captain Long?"

"Well, I'm sure going to do my best to."

The door flew open. The big man came in roaring, wild as before. He'd picked up his rapier. He charged.

"Good," said Adam.

Never had the Hearth Cricket been so crowded. It was after closing hour, too, indeed near dawn. But as Hal pointed out, the bailiffs, who were everywhere, in and out, wouldn't break up a private party. 208

Adam Long felt mighty ashamed of himself, standing there naked to the waist while Goodwife Bingham washed his cuts.

"Good thing I took that coat off," he grumbled. "When I think of what I paid for it—"

"They was anchored out in the river, that's what took me so long," Hal Bingham said for the fourth or fifth time.

Resolved Forbes was staring at his skipper.

"You told me you might kill a man, sir. A man? You didn't say you were going to tackle a whole gang!"

Adam started, looking for his shirt.

"Tarnation, I forgot all about that! Must be near sunup. Ought to be a chair here for me soon. I got to get shaved."

"Shaved? What in Tophet are you going to do at this hour?"

"Fight," said Adam.

|T f\ A sliver of moon hung over the field. It was cold; and even *~y yy before he was obliged to take off his hat Adam regretted that he'd let them crop his hair. He could see his breath. He would have hopped about, stamping, had not John Chumley forbidden this.

" 'Twould look as if you was nervous." lam.

Sir Jervis Johnston and his party arrived in Birdcage Walk a scant two minutes after Adam and his second. Some men, Chumley whispered, believed that it was bad luck to be first in the field; yet it would be bad manners to keep your enemy waiting.

If Adam must stay still, Chumley was a jumpingjack. Whether because they smelled trouble or because they had overheard informative talk on the way, every one of the chairmen and linkboys lingered; and they chattered like magpies—until the busy John Chumley shushed them.

"Now remember—gravity, gravity!" he'd tell Adam.

"I'll do the best I can."

Even on the way, Chumley, having hopped out of his own chair, electing to walk beside Adam's, had fretted and fussed Hke a mother at her daughter's first ball, a spate of instructions and advice. He made it clear, for the first time, that Adam had been accorded the honor of blading it out vAth Johnston chiefly because Johnston had difficulty finding opponents.