John Masters (7 page)

"Hold!" the steersman said.

"Mind your oar!" Pendril snapped. "Hear me, all! We are not going to the Tin Islands. We go to the Hesperides.... Do not move! Tregan is at your back, an arrow fitted to a bow. One-Eye, take all knives and spikes and throw them overboard."

"You are stealing the ship?" Tamar burst out.

A sailor said, "It is all the same to me where I go as long as I am paid. But where are these Hesperides? I have never heard of them."

Daniel said, "The Hesperides are islands in the western ocean where the heavens swallow the sea. Though they may not exist."

"They exist," Pendril said. "And we go there."

"How far?" a sailor asked. "No one has ever gone more than three days west of the pillars, and then only because they were blown out by an easterly. And they had a hard time getting back."

"Enough!" Pendril shouted. "We shall go as far as is necessary. One of we three Carteians will always be awake and on watch here at the poop. Anyone who tries to thwart us will go over the side. Now, steerman, steer two points to port. Put the sun dead astern. There! Clear the poop!" The sailors slowly went forward. "Let the rowers rest while the wind holds," Pendril told the rowmaster, "and give them an extra ration of meat. They will need it later."

Daniel said, "You can die for this, Pendril, when we get back ... if we do. Why have you done it? What are the Hesperides to you?"

"That is my affair," Pendril said.

The rowmaster stuck his head up through the hatch. "The slaves want you to speak to them, Pendril. It is not my doing," he added hastily.

Leaving One-Eye on the poop with the steersman, Pendril ran down the ladder and faced the galley slaves. "We shall starve!" one cried.

"We have food and water for three months," Pendril said. "The ship is sound. Have no fear."

"We shall fall over the edge of the world," another cried. Pendril hesitated. Lying on the bare, bleached rocks at the summit of the Rock, gazing through the strait at the Western Ocean, he had often tried to see the edge of the world, to imagine it there where the water poured over in an endless cataract mightier than any fall on any river. But then there would be a current, and here there was none....

To the waiting slaves he said, "There must be a rim to keep the water in. Or perhaps the sea is not flat. You, as I, have seen ships coming over the horizon. From all directions they rise up, wherever we are. It is as though we were always on top of a round ball."

A slave said, "The sea cannot be round, master. The water would all roll down."

"I know not why it does not fall," Pendril said. "But it does not, and it will not." He surveyed the banked, gaunt faces. These men had nothing to live for; they could be allies. He had been a boatswain ten years and knew sailors and galley slaves as well as he knew the comers and crannies of the Rock. "In the Hesperides," he said, "the ripe fruit falls into your mouths from the trees! Women more beautiful than goddesses, more lustful than
kedeshot,
crowd to serve you."

The slaves set up a ragged cheer and rattled the oars in the tholes with a low thunder.

Pendril raised his voice. "And you rowers, strong men all, there is a marvel there above aught else on earth. The women are slit across, not up and down!"

The rowers had all heard the old fable when they were children and set up another laughing cheer. Pendril said, "Rowmaster, a ration of wine to all."

He left to more cheering, went straight to his cabin, and lay down. He would need all the sleep he could get while the sailors were still surprised and disorganized and perhaps a little excited with the idea of the Hesperides. So far, so good. But the naked women? The apples? How? Where? He fell asleep.

Tamar and Daniel came down later. Tamar sat at her husband's side in the gloom, staring at the canvas curtain. Pendril was there. Pirate! She caught Daniel's arm, pointed at the canvas, and made a gesture of strangling. Daniel shook his head wearily. She felt in the little box where she kept a few jewels and knick-knacks, pulled out a small knife, and showed it to him. He shook his head again, but she hefted it in her hand and looked longingly at the canvas. Daniel glanced uneasily at her and mumbled, "I am going back on deck."

She stayed where she was, holding the knife. She felt taut and on edge. When Pendril had called them to the poop at dawn, she had been fondling her husband, trying to arouse him to make love to her. He had seemed to welcome Pendril's call as a last-minute reprieve. She frowned, picked the big fang out of the box, and began to scrape at it with the knife. The ivory was very old, but gently, carefully, with this sharp knife it could be worked. What should she make of it? It was a thing such as men liked to handle. Smooth to the touch, rounded, waiting. Should she make a dagger of it? She stared at the ivory, trying to bring the shape hidden in it clear to her eyes.

On the third night out of Carteia the wind dropped and on the fifth turned contrary. The sailors struck the sail, and from that moment the sea began to rise, slowly but inexorably, more each day. At first Tamar crouched in the cabin, feeling the ship rise giddily, then drop, leaving her stomach behind. Later, when she was not carving the ivory fang, she spent her days on the poop, clinging to the gunwale and watching from there. Gradually, as the ship kept rising to the endless waves, a sort of exhilaration began to mingle with the anxious fear in the pit of her belly. Half the oars were unshipped now and lashed under the benches. That gave four men to each of the remaining oars, three always at work and one resting. The white foam rose higher on the waves, and every now and then she felt a sense of miracle as a mountain slope of blue-black water marched by, lifting them to its summit, and for a moment the wind blew salt into her face and the horizon was the end of the world and all between a continent of waves, water, tossing spume, with no living thing on it but themselves and the gray and white seabirds. Tamar found herself unwillingly grateful to Pendril for showing her these marvels of creation, but Daniel became sick and pale, could barely eat, and lay all day in the cabin, shivering with fear. On the twentieth day he muttered to her, "I can bear this no longer. Go to Pendril and beg him to turn back, for assuredly we shall all die if he does not. Offer him anything. Gold. Half our land in Carthage. Your body."

"My body?" she cried.

"For all our sakes," he said. "Why not? Go."

She went stiffly to the poop and found Pendril there with Tregan at the steering oar. "Turn back," she said abruptly, "or you will kill my husband."

"I cannot," he said gravely.

"Why?" she said. "What will you do if we come at last to the Hesperides?"

"Bring back a golden apple," he said suddenly. "It is the price demanded by the goddess for the land I want; for the corner of the Rock where I stopped and you ran into me." She remembered and for a time did not speak, for she had remembered too the yearning in his face and understood now what drove him. But her husband had sent her, and she must obey.

She said, "Turn back, and you shall have your price. Gold. Land in Carthage. My body. All."

He shook his head unsmilingly.

Tregan said, "Take it, for all of us, Pendril. Turn back. There are no Hesperides except in a man's dreams."

He said, "The ship rides well. We go on."

She stared at the square red man. She had offered herself to him twice, and twice he had refused her. Anger and shame tensed her like two powerful arms bending a bow. She lashed out at him with all her strength. His hand went toward the knife at his belt as her blow landed, then he turned his back on her.

She went slowly to her cabin and lay down. When Daniel asked her how she had fared, she only shook her head. She lay on her back, staring at the deck beams low over her head. If Daniel was willing to sacrifice her for his own safety, what would he not do? Where was the nobility she had once seen in him, the strength to protect her, the warmth to cherish? He crouched here trembling while the rough Carteian above faced the waves and the unknown unafraid, driving to his dream.

She took the knife and fang and began to carve carefully, for she had almost released the shape from the bone now.

The wind blew stronger, and rain slanted down from low clouds. On the twenty-fifth day the wind dropped a little, and the white water tossed less violently on top of the waves, though the waves themselves grew larger. On the twenty-sixth day the clouds built up again, and soon after noon the light began to fail. Here and there a thin ray stabbed down onto the mountainous waste of the ocean, the water slate blue and the clouds the same color. To the northwest deeper gray rain curtains hung from scudding cloud to heaving sea. She went to the cabin and found Tregan there whispering with Daniel. They put their fingers to their lips. When Tregan had gone, Daniel whispered, "I have won the other Carteians over. We are going to overthrow Pendril."

"Will you kill him?" she asked.

"He deserves it. Go on deck and stand in the stem. When Tregan puts his head out of the hatch and calls, 'The rowmaster wants you, Pendril,' that is the signal. Get behind Pendril and seize his knife. He trusts you, and you are a woman."

She found Pendril on the poop. For a moment the appearance of the sky made her forget the fear and doubt with which her husband's words had loaded her. Pendril heard her gasp and said, "It is a frightening sight. Go back below, and you will not see it."

She shook her head. "I would rather stay here with you. It is worse if you cannot see."

Her thoughts circled dully. How soon would they come? What would she do? There was the knife in his belt at the small of his back, where sailors always carried it.

"Hold hard now," Pendril said.

The wind note rose like a keening bird, the bow gave a sudden violent lurch, a sheet of water surged out to either side, and the figurehead plunged in to her neck. The sailors had often told Tamar there was no danger until the
Kedesha
wet her breasts: now the sea was going over them with every wave.

The black storm raced across the sea and struck. Tamar crouched gasping under the gunwale. The wind shrieked, the rain deluged down. Lightning split the sky directly over the mast, thunder cracked all around the horizon. The sea was lit by shivering curtains of light. Under the thunder she heard the rowers howling like doomed animals below. The stem sank, and the figurehead's back-thrust shoulders shook against the lightning in that same obscene dance she had witnessed at Carteia. The stem rose, and the
Kedesha
plunged her face into the sea. Sheets of water surged along the deck and poured onto the rowers below.

As suddenly as it had come, the squall passed, fleeing eastward down the wind. Pendril turned to Tamar with a smile. "So! That one, at least, is past!"

His face was red, cold, streaming wet, happy. She said suddenly, "They are going to seize you. Tregan will tell you the rowmaster wants you. I am to take your knife..."

Pendril's expression did not change. He glanced at the steersman, but the man could not have heard. He said, "It is well. When they come, take my knife, but go behind the steersman there, and if he moves, stab him hard." He opened the chest that had stood on the poop since leaving Carteia, got out the bow and arrow, and went to the very stem of the vessel. To the steersman he said softly. "Hold her head to the sea. Nothing else. Make no sound, neither cry nor call."

Almost at once Tregan's head appeared over the poop ladder as he called, "The rowmaster wants you, Pendril." Tamar took the knife from Pendril's belt as Tregan ran up the ladder, followed by One-Eye, the other three sailors, and the rowmaster. She held the knife at the steersman's neck, and Pendril aimed the bow, the arrow notched and the string drawn. The giant waves marched slowly on, the
Kedesha
rhythmically rose and sank.

"Hold!" Tregan cried. "The woman has betrayed us." They were gathered like snarling dogs, those behind trying to crowd forward, Tregan and One-Eye holding back. She did not see her husband but heard him calling from below, "Go on! There are only two. Go!"

"How much did he pay you to betray your promise?" Pendril said. Tregan charged with an oath, his knife blade flashing. The bow twanged, and he sank to the deck spurting blood, the arrow through his throat. At the same moment Tamar heard Daniel scream. His hand appeared, reaching up, clawing, then vanished.

Pendril said, "What happened?"

The rowmaster, at the back, stammered, "A slave threw a knife. He must have had it hidden. The captain is dead."

"And that was not the only knife we have," a voice called. "Free us, Pendril, and we will kill them all."

"Well?" Pendril said, staring at One-Eye, the bow again drawn. Sullenly One-Eye threw down his knife.

Pendril said, "Back to your posts all. The storm will return. We must work together or..."

A bolt of lightning and a close chord of thunder drowned the rest of his sentence. A savage jerk of the vessel flung Tamar to her knees. "An extra man to the steering oar," Pendril called. "And you two, say a prayer and throw the bodies overboard."

Tamar went down to the rowers' deck. Daniel lay face down, the knife in his back. Two sailors picked him up as she knelt. She bit her lip, but she knew the rule of the sea. She bowed her head and closed her eyes and prayed. She had not wished this fate on him. When she looked up again, she was alone.

After an hour lying in her cabin she rose and went about the ship, giving the rowers food and wine and the sailors water.

It was the opposite of the night of the ritual orgy at Carteia. Then the hours had started slowly and gradually moved faster; now they went fast and gradually slowed, though there was no minute, no second free. The roaring and groaning and creaking and crying were continuous. There were always three sailors at the steering oar. Pendril was always moving, from bow to stem, from upper deck to lower, exhorting, cursing, encouraging. In the reflected lightning she saw oars smashed and new ones put in the rowers' hands. She saw three rowers rise together from their bench and stumble like blind men toward the ladder to the deck and Pendril run at them, his knife drawn. One man fell in the gangway, a lurch of the ship flung another like a stone against the bulkhead, and the third, when he stumbled back to his oar, could not control it. The end kicked up under his chin, breaking his neck. Pendril pulled in the oar and lashed it down.