Easton's Gold (16 page)

The captain's hair still sticks between his fingers. Fleet tries to rub it off against his breeches. Then he steps forward to the barrel again, puts his hands around the captain's shoulders and hauls upwards. There is a hollow dripping sound as water runs off the captain's head into the barrel. But there is not a twitch of life. He lets go and the captain's head falls back into the water with a splash. The cabin tips sharply, and Fleet backs off from the barrel. His shoulder blades come into contact with the cabin door. Fleet slides down into a crouching position.

The timbers creak like a laughing crow, then a low groan emanates from somewhere deep in the ship's belly.

Fleet hears footsteps outside, coming closer. He leans harder against the door, half turning.

There is a knock. Fleet tries to mouth some words but forgets how to speak.

“It's me,” says a woman after a few moments, and Fleet recognizes Gabrielle's voice. “Are you there?”

Fleet hears the door handle turn. “No,” he manages to say. “Don't come in.”

There is a silence.

“Fleet,” says Gabrielle, “I wanted to warn you. The captain is looking for me. He might be looking for you too.”

Fleet turns further and lays his palm gently on the door. “Too late,” he gasps, “I killed him.”

Fleet hears nothing for a moment.

“What did you say?” Gabrielle whispers.

“I killed the captain. He's here, dead.”

The handle moves again, and Fleet pushes harder against the door.

“No. Don't come in. I told you.”

“Fleet,” she whispers, her voice like the hush before a tempest. “We must do something. Let me in.”

Fleet looks across at the dead man—his feet are firmly on the floor, his arms seem to embrace the barrel.
Like a great ox drinking
. He turns back to the door. “Is there anyone else out there?” he whispers.

“Of course not.”

Fleet slowly stands. The handle turns and the door opens. Gabrielle slips in through the narrowest of gaps and closes the door after her. Her dark eyes glisten with fear as she gazes at Fleet and reaches toward his face.

“You're hurt, badly,” she gasps, wincing.

Fleet bows his head and stands to the side to reveal the captain.

“We must tell the Marquis,” says Gabrielle.

“No!” says Fleet.

“We must! Who else has power to help us?”

Fleet clenches his fists and crouches down on the floor again. “He's already turned me into a murderer.”

“All the more reason he should help you now.” Gabrielle looks around the room quickly. She goes to the chair, stoops, picks up Fleet's folded tunic and throws it to him. “You must cover yourself before he comes.”

Fleet holds the tunic to his lips. His blood is now mingled with tears—he didn't notice them falling—and the combination now drips down, soiling the material. Gabrielle goes to the door then stops and crouches down in front of Fleet.

“You know what we must do,” she says gently. “He tried to kill you, is that right?”

“Yes,” says Fleet dumbly.

“There is no ship's crew and no court in the civilized world that would take your side, you know that. But the Marquis would, because he trusts you and you are useful to him.” Her fingertips touch his cheek. “So we must waste no time. Put on your tunic, please.”

Gabrielle slips out of the cabin, and Fleet listens as her footsteps fade away into the body of the ship.

__________

“Y
OU ARE A MAN OF COURAGE
and brains, Mr. Fleet,” says the Marquis, pacing back again to Henley's lifeless body. “I could not be more proud of you.”

Fleet, now seated on his bed, crumpled and withdrawn, looks up at the Marquis. His eyes seem to fill with something like gratitude. Gabrielle longs to approach him and put her arm around his shoulder. She smiles at him instead.

The Marquis bends over and peers at the side of the captain's partly submerged face as though reading his thoughts. “He was a villain without question. A man who cannot honour a woman and respect her wishes is a man without worth.”

His words tug painfully inside Gabrielle's heart. She does not want to think the Marquis a hypocrite, but the villainy he describes is as much his own as the captain's.

“Our journey will no longer be encumbered by his blundering incompetence,” the Marquis adds in a whisper, as though addressing the dead man directly. Then he sighs and straightens himself. “Concealment is now our aim.” He turns, walks to the stool and sits down. The ship tips sharply to the side. “It must be made clear to the crew that our captain was last seen during the storm and on deck. A watchman died last night, so everyone will know the conditions were treacherous enough to scoop Henley overboard, especially if he were drunk.”

“What about the body, my lord?” asks Gabrielle.

“It must go inside the barrel. The brine will preserve it.”

Gabrielle glances at Fleet. His face turns sick with disgust and fear.

“But, my lord, it cannot stay here with Mr. Fleet!”

“It cannot leave without arousing suspicion,” the Marquis says calmly. “And it will help us in two ways. When they hear the captain has disappeared, they will certainly want to search the ship. We have two secrets here, the captain's carcass and Mr. Fleet's face.”

Gabrielle looks at Fleet. The gashes around his ear and mouth are enough to prove he was fighting.

“One word will keep both secrets locked safe inside this cabin.”

“What word?” asks Fleet feebly, like a man awakening from a sleep.

“Fever!” whispers the Marquis, his eyes sparkling. “We will say he has a distemper that spreads easily. A plague at sea is worse than any storm, and its results more certain if a sufferer is free to mingle.”

“What about food…and company?” Gabrielle asks, perhaps a little too anxiously.

“You alone will be allowed to minister to him, Gabrielle,” Easton answers. “I will say you have already suffered the same ague but have come through its torments. You will bring me my medicine daily as Mr. Fleet instructs and return to him with my payment.”

Gabrielle nods and looks across to the bed. Fleet's head bows low.

The Marquis rises and turns again to the lifeless body.

“Mr. Fleet,” he says, approaching the barrel and rolling up his sleeves, “you must help me lift him inside.”

Fleet stares across at the Marquis like a sleepwalker. He stands and goes over to the barrel. Gabrielle takes a step backwards as the two men bend low, each taking one leg. The Marquis nods at Fleet, and they lift in unison. The body tumbles headfirst into the barrel, brine overflowing the rim and hissing over the plank floor. The Marquis pushes the foot down, then he lowers the barrel lid.

O
nly Gabrielle makes it bearable; for the last eleven days she has been Fleet's only sunlight in this odd little prison of bare walls and creaking boards.

All that time the brine barrel has sloshed and bumped inside whenever the sea gets rough.

All that time Fleet has nursed his mother's damaged skull. There is a crack now along one side and a small dent from where Henley struck it against the bed frame. But he has smoothed it off as well as he can, and it lies safe now under the blankets as Gabrielle sits beside him laughing, counting the gold coins on her lap.

Gabrielle brings him food in the morning and takes the moss powder to the Marquis. In the evening she returns with his supper and his day's earnings in gold. She generally stays with him for hours and listens to stories from whatever dim corner of his life the intervening solitude has unearthed. A few days ago, Fleet told her about his captivity with the travelling show. Everything came back to him as though he were a child once more. The experience was fresh in every scent and detail. He told her about the dwarf, Miguel, whose face their owner carved into a grin. Fever and infection had followed the surgeon's knife, but even while he was dying, Miguel helped Fleet escape, loosening a bar of the cage with his strong, thick hands, whispering to him through his fetid, bloodstained mouth about a world outside full of farms and wine and dancing—a world he had scarcely seen himself.

“Go,” gasped Miguel, as the bar wrenched clear. Fleet saw a glint of moonlight in his friend's tears.

“I daren't. They'll catch me.”

“Go,” Miguel repeated, kicking Fleet's rump so hard he fell through the gap and landed on the dry grass outside. “Run away now, or I'll call out and tell them you tried to escape. Then they'll torture you.”

Miguel stood upright in the cage, his body blocking the space he had worked so hard to create.

Fleet turned and saw the moon hanging over the rolling fields of Normandy, the grasses hissing in the flower-scented breeze like some gentle, beckoning ocean. He knew he could be far away before the owners were awake. Miguel stood silent as a guard behind him, but Fleet sensed his desperation. Fleet breathed in and felt his tongue tingle with the scent of earth and leaves. Suddenly, he was bounding like a hare through the hay, ducking in and out of hedgerows, causing crows and lapwings to fly in panic around him. He heard the thunder of pheasants' wings as the birds shot up from the fields like fireworks. Fleet was dizzy with freedom and felt that, at last, this was life. He didn't know then that when the euphoria of freedom was gone, the cage would return and his whole life would be lived in a pendulum rhythm of imprisonment and release.

Gabrielle, in turn, has been telling Fleet about the life of the ship. She tells him how she is often followed by Philippa, silently and at a distance, and that Philippa has become an extra shadow. Fleet laughs at Gabrielle's puzzlement. There is nothing unique about Philippa's infatuation, he tells her, no matter how strangely she expresses it. She is merely in love.

Gabrielle tells Fleet about Maria's unrequited passion for Jacques, how she still weeps and bangs her head outside Jacques's door to no avail. She tells Fleet about the ship's crew, how most of them apparently believe their captain was swept overboard and now seem quite happy with the change of commander. The ship is so swift, she says, with the Marquis at the helm, and the crew know they will be home so much quicker now.

Today Gabrielle surprises him. The Marquis insists they are already close to land.

Fleet feels an odd tingle at those words. He gets her to repeat them.

“Yes,” she says. She scoops the gold coins from her lap, holds them in her cupped hands for a moment then drops them slowly into Fleet's hands. “He told me when I gave him the medicine. Mr. Sykes, the bursar, confirmed it later on.”

“It's too quick,” says Fleet, letting the coins slip through his fingers onto the bedclothes. “It can't be.”

“Yet the number of seabirds circling the masts and perching on the deck rail seems to confirm it,” she says.

Fleet stands up from the bed and begins pacing the cabin.

“What is it?” asks Gabrielle.

“It's just too soon,” Fleet repeats. His heart thumps harder, and his mind is far from the travelling show, far from London or France, far even from Gabrielle. He is a small child suddenly, fetching water for his mother, watching her sing while she bathes his young brother, cupping water in her hands and letting it trickle on his head. Fleet remembers how his mother used to turn to him and smile when his brother laughed.

Then like lightening, Fleet is transported to another place; he is being held high between the shoulders of two men from the pirate ship. He is their mascot as they march side by side back up the hill toward his burning house. He feels the vice-like grip of their hands and the sudden wrench of his hair from behind as he tries to look away. “There's your father!” says one. “Stop calling for him. He was no good to us. But you and your mother are.” Fleet looks at the body of his father lying face up, eyes open, but no more alive than the stones around him.

He thinks of this, his last vision of Newfoundland, and how he is returning now under the command of the man who first turned his parents into outcasts. He is returning under the command of the man who has turned him into a murderer.

Fleet feels Gabrielle's warm touch upon his shoulder. He turns and falls into her embrace, glancing at the brine barrel as he does so.

“It's Easton I should have killed, Gabrielle, not Henley.”

There is a silence. Gabrielle remains still, not loosening her embrace. Fleet can feel her mind working.

“You know that's wrong,” she says, reaching up and stroking the back of his hair. “Killing is wrong.”

Fleet can think of no immediate reply, but something is forming in his brain. He glances again at the barrel and thinks of the lumbering, red-faced captain.
Would he have threatened anyone if not for Easton
?
Would I have felt his hands around my neck if not for Easton
?