Honey Harlot (19 page)

Only one obstacle. If he were to be believed, and the men not, then my husband would go free, a hero of the seas; and those men, whose real crime had been the broaching of a keg of liquor, would face long imprisonment or even death. Would I permit that? They knew that I would not—he and Mary. Moreover… To any Hope that he should at last, all danger past, meet with her again and ally himself to her in some part of the world where her story would be unknown—only one obstacle. I looked back into the deathly white face in the mirror with the burnt black holes of eyes—and went to the bed and there knelt down and prayed. How long I prayed, what prayers I said, whether they were for myself or for him—they have been ever since for
him
—I could not tell you now. At some time I must have climbed on to the bunk and there fallen into a sleep that was almost insensibility. When at last I awoke, it was afternoon.

I went back to that terrible mirror: combed out my hair and without haste did it up in its usual way, the smooth bands divided out and then wound and crossed about my small head, very smooth and indeed, as I look back upon that young creature that I then was, very beautiful, palely gleaming. I put on my sepia dress and found that the hands that fastened the innumerable hooks and eyes might be clumsy with their long, inept fingers, but were not trembling. Where my strength came from, I could not now tell you: from that long-ago stern childhood training, I suppose, and my deep faith in God. So timid and self-doubting in so many ways, yet there was something in me of a lion-heart. All my life had been a struggle to survive my own sense of inferiority; it had built up within me, perhaps, a quiet obstinacy on the rare occasions when I knew without doubting it, that I was right. I knew now that I was right and though I knew also that it might bring me to death—at Mary’s hands for I believed that he would not, even as the man he was now, go as far as that—still I must take the path I believed in.

In the saloon, some food was still left on the table. I ate something, not wanting to but because I knew I must keep up my strength for God knew what troubles to come. It was still very calm; I think even that the breeze had dropped again. The decks were clean now: the scrubbing done, they had hauled up buckets of sea water and sluiced them down. No sign remained of Richardson’s blood. A canvas was spread in the stern and Gilling had been laid out decently upon it. My husband was even now supervising the wrapping of the canvas around him, and fastening of ropes about it. Of the boy, Head, there was no sign. Volkert and Boz were doing the work, Martens trying to help with his one good arm, Goodschaad also but he seemed very ill. Martens asked me: ‘How is with Mr Richardson now, Ma’am?’

Mary said quickly: ‘We’ve told them how you’ve been looking after him.’

I said: ‘All is well with Mr Richardson now.’

He touched his own wounded arm. ‘Not too paining?’

‘No pain,’ I said. ‘No pain.’

‘But danger? Is very ill? Is danger?’

I answered as steadily as I could: ‘No. He’s past danger.’ An Englishman might have caught at the way I expressed it but they were Germans and I knew they would not. Volkert said, busy with ropes and wrapping, ‘Is gutt. Is gutt man, Richardson,’ and his brother looked up from his work and said also, ‘Very gutt man.’ I recalled that but a matter of hours ago it had been in their intention to put Richardson in my husband’s place; nor did they look into their Captain’s face as they spoke. He made no comment; said only, looking down at Gilling, ‘Better leave it till nightfall to bury him.’

‘Sundown,’ said Martens.

‘There’ll be stars tonight.’

‘Why not sundown?’ said Martens, looking surprised. My husband said quickly: ‘Very well—sundown then.’

I had never liked Gilling but it was pitiful now to see the still face disappearing for ever from the sight of man, as the last fold of the canvas covered it over. The ropes were drawn tight and knotted; he lay like a parcel awaiting disposal. The men dispersed. I said to Martens, ‘How is the boy?’

He shrugged. ‘Eyes very batt. Is drinking much, perhaps. We are not drinking much when we discovering not rum. Only Head and Good drinking after that: Good very ill also.’ I wondered how much they recalled of the prelude to their drinking, of how she had incited them to broaching the barrel, deceived them into believing that it held rum. I think not much. She had been, in the past, boon companion to all of them, many an orgy they’d had, no doubt, in the taverns of the waterfront; to them it would be all part of any wild escapade that sailors will indulge in ashore; though not, if they are wise, at sea. When they found out their mistake, they had stopped drinking and no doubt saved themselves terrible consequences; the boy’s condition and Goodschaad’s were proof enough of that. But as the day progressed, they were coming back to normality, except for Martens, whose arm seemed to get no better. They ignored Mary now; they had seen very clearly what the new situation was—she who had belonged to them all, sharing out her favours with laughing generosity, now belonged exclusively to their Captain and of him they were now very much afraid. As they went, he called out various orders to them. They muttered ‘Ay ay, sir,’ in the customary way; but Martens turned back and said to me: ‘Ve can seeing Richardson soon?’

‘Richardson is asleep,’ I said. Asleep and rocking in the gentle swell of the great green grave that had taken him in.

They went. Mary stood with my husband looking after them; sleeve to sleeve, always close, like two staunch companions excluding all other loves. She said: ‘You did very well, Sarah.’

‘I think she wasn’t over convincing,’ my husband said.

‘I said what I must,’ I said, ‘without telling any lie.’

She laughed. ‘Funny little Sarah! How close she draws the distinction between deception and a lie!’

‘If you don’t like it,’ I said, ‘I’ll most willingly call them back and speak the truth.’

She laughed again, clinging to my husband’s arm. ‘Good heavens—what a spitfire it becomes if it’s teased!’

‘A chained dog will bark,’ I had said to him, confined to my cabin lest I speak a word with the men of his crew. Now I felt not chained but like a wild thing, running to and fro, pent up in a close confinement all set about with danger. ‘A caged creature will snap,’ I said, ‘if you poke at it through the bars.’ I walked away from them to my old haven of the slung hammock amidships. After a little while he passed me, going to speak to Boz Lorenzen, who was working up forrard. ‘I shall go to my cabin for some rest,’ he said to him. He jerked a thumb backwards: I think he never brought himself to naming her to the men. ‘She will take care of Mr Richardson.’ She will take care of
you,
no doubt, I thought in bitter repugnance as he passed back down the deck; and indeed he turned back a little and said: ‘Stay where you are, Sarah. Leave us alone.’ I looked back at him with cold disgust and, disconcerted perhaps, even he, even now—he said, ‘After so much—I need some rest.’

‘I hope you may get it,’ I said.

He shrugged as if he could no longer hope, no longer cared. ‘There’s a great deal,’ he said, ‘that you can never understand.’

‘That’s been my experience all my life,’ I said. ‘But I think I’m beginning to learn.’ I added: ‘A little late perhaps. I haven’t much time left—have I?’

‘To learn?’ he said.

‘To live,’ I answered him.

He seemed to give a great shudder, he flung back his head, squared his fine shoulders; a terrible pain came to those dark eyes of his. He said at last, ‘No hurt shall come to you, Sarah. How could I lift my hand against you?’

‘You needn’t,’ I said. ‘Your other half will do it for you.’

He did not disclaim. He said only, ‘No one wishes you a moment’s harm—if only you will comply.’

‘If to comply is to cheat and lie, perhaps condemn men to unjust punishment,’ I said, ‘I shall not. And you—a man of God as once you were! For your soul’s sake—make confession when the time comes, tell the truth; for I tell you now while we two are for a moment alone—I will save you, my husband, if you have no longer power to save yourself. I shall tell only the truth. If you suffer—that is your rightful atonement.’

‘It’s not for you to judge me—’

‘Is it not? After those two you’ve killed—whom have you injured most?’

‘Then judge. But it’s not for you to dictate what you call my atonement. Mind your own business!’

‘I will,’ I said. ‘And it is not part of my business to tell wicked lies.’

‘If you tell nothing but the truth, Sarah, I shall go to prison; very possibly to my death.’

‘You’ve just told me,’ I said, ‘to mind my own business.’

He went away. For a long, long time I rocked in my hammock, huddled tight in my shawl from the cold; and kept my mind resolutely away from my cabin—and my bed. What was to be the future arrangement?—was I to move into the tigress’s cage now that she was free of it?—and she occupy my room? At least, I thought, for the rest of my life, however short or long it may be—I shall sleep alone.

An hour before sundown, he reappeared and went about the business of the ship, issuing orders calmly, making careful arrangements for the apportionment of work once the wind should rise at last and the Mary Celeste be on her way again; with the crew so much reduced, they would have a hard time of it. He made no comment on the cause of the reduction in numbers: allowed it to be assumed that Richardson was unlikely to recover sufficiently to contribute very much during the seven or eight days that should see us to landfall. As to the boy—till the condition of his eyes improved, he had better occupy Gilling’s vacated bunk in the crew’s quarters, leaving the bunk in the galley empty, so that the—women—might take over his work there and produce the meals. ‘While the calm lasts,’ he said, looking up into the quiet sky, ‘conserve your strength. Do what work you must; but you must be fit when we get under way again, to face the rigging. We shall be only three well men, unless Goodschaad improves and Martens’ arm mends very quickly.’ He said to Boz Lorenzen, ‘Go down and tell the boy to move his things. When we have dealt with Gilling’s burial, a meal can be prepared.’

I doubted that Gilling would have cared who prayed over him. If my husband in his wickedness chose to dissemble and speak words he was not fit to utter, let him do so. Richardson had gone without such uncleanliness to his clean, green grave. The men had tidied and cleansed themselves; Mary, hypocritical, had tied a scarf about her bright hair, even taken a dark rug from the bunk and wore it draped as a shawl about the gay pink dress. Feel for her what I might, I could not but recognise that with the fine bones of her face so closely outlined by the lifting back of her hair, she looked more beautiful than ever I had seen her with its shining glory all about her. Honey Mary, who had been so sweet and full of laughter!—whose laughter now was full of a vicious triumph, whose kindness was overriden by those new considerations that centred around her passion—her passion for the man, who, to my prescient young mind, wise perhaps long before its time—substituted for the father with the flail whose illicit love she had craved in her girlhood should be hers. Between them—she handing the pistol, he employing it—they had murdered the man whose body they now stood over with faces masked by a monstrous false piety, and he spoke the words, and the two German brothers lifted the great, flaccid parcel between them and let it slide gently over the rail and into the sea…

And cried out ‘Vot’s dat? Vot’s floating astern?’ and turned round and stared at my husband as though they would go mad and said: ‘It’s Richardson!’

He had tried to put the burial off till nightfall. ‘At sundown,’ they had suggested instead and he had not dared resist. And now, as though Banquo’s ghost, blood-bolter’d smiled upon him—my husband stood while the ghost of dead Richardson rose up out of his green grave and pointed his murdered hand. In all the terrible moments, no moment had been more terrible than that.

Mary let fall the dark cloak, untied the dark scarf, shook out her sunny hair. She stood close at my husband’s side. She said: ‘We could not bear to tell you that he was dead.’

Martens stammered, ‘He—died—?’

‘He died up here on deck,’ I said. ‘He died in my arms.’

‘You told us—’

‘I told you that he was in no pain,’ I said, ‘and that was true. I told you that he was—asleep; and that was as near to the truth as I dared to come.’

The blind boy cried: ‘You’ve seen Mr Richardson?’

‘Dead and t’rown into de sea,’ said Boz, ‘like carcase of a dog.’

‘I prayed for him,’ I said. ‘I prayed for him.’

Four pairs of eyes turned to me; the boy’s were covered now with bandages, but he also, though painfully, turned his head. Volkert said, ‘You are doing no wronk, Ma’am, never,’ and Boz, ‘Richardson vos sayink we shall protectink Mrs Briggs.’

‘Protect yourselves,’ said my husband, and the pistol was in his hand. Mary said, ‘Shoot them down! What have we to lose? A mutiny—’

‘Then shoot me too,’ I said, ‘for what you do to these men, I shall tell to all the world.’

His pistol still trained upon them, he backed away and she with him and they conferred a long time, whispering. I said to the men, hardly believing it: ‘They won’t shoot you. If they do, they know I shall tell of it. And he won’t harm me!’

Boz Lorenzen said: ‘He said Cap’n vos mad; vos no more sane. Richardson said. Is true.’

‘He won’t let harm come to me,’ I said again, ‘and while I live, he won’t harm
you
.’

‘Gilling. Richardson…’ Martens said. ‘He vould kill
me,
but got only wounding.’

‘You were all armed. You attacked him. That’ll be his excuse. He won’t kill you while you stand helpless. He knows I would tell of it.’

My husband came forward again, she ever at his shoulder, the gun trained on the men still. He said: ‘You shall have your chance. The yawl is still afloat. I shall give you provisions, you may take her. By this morning’s charting, we are no more than six miles from landfall. Once there, you may tell what story you will—I shall have my own story, we shall see who will win.’

‘Six miles from land?’ I said.

‘Six miles. Our position is chalked on the slate below. You may check with it if you will. Then come up and help with water and provisions; bring warm clothes for them. We’ll play fair.’