Pirate Talk or Mermalade (9 page)

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It’s a trick of the weather up there. Is there a rope yet to belay me?

Under that cask that is split.

I don’t see a cloud in all of the sky, not a one.

My stump be a’tingle, how can it storm more?

We’ll need real luck this time. The parrot—

—left its feather.

I’ll take a drink now. What—just the dregs?

If the wind comes, athwart is where I’ll be the safest. I’ll lie down there.

It’s black above now, you drunkard.

There’s a face at the scuppers, a dead slave come to haunt us. Oh, god from above!

A woman?

They say they come at the last.

Only a screaming wind and more wave.

Best we lash ourselves down.

Yes, the deck at last.

Not both of us to one plank or we’ll both go to heaven.

One for both, or none. No swimming for me.

Nor for myself neither.

The wind! The wind!

Come away from the side. The heaving’s less here, hold to the hatch.

The heaving’s worse, the wine—I’m—

All over me.

I saved you.

I thought the fish saved me.

That terrible fish? It was as big as the size of yourself and roiled through those waters like two men, it was as big as the water pigs Bligh told us of.

Must’ve come up from the deep on account of the storm.

It had you afloat on its scales until I came at it with my cutlass. I couldn’t see its face—

You stuck it with the cutlass. Almost through the gills.

Gills or gullet, I couldn’t see for the thrashing. Waters like hell, they were. It had ahold of you and you were going full to your end, going down, down, down in all your many clothes.

My pockets will drown me yet.

Take out the coin next time.

I had no coin. I saw other fish circling, while it had me.

Not I.

Others came up around it in the swirl of the blood and the storm.

You did not see that. You were too soon holding fast to my leg and blowing to the surface.

I saw what I saw. The fish was less holding me than pulling me down as sure my leg now dangles for the sharks to trim.

I saved you with my wooden leg afloat.

If the wind hadn’t fallen, we would have been finished, wooden leg or no.

The wind fell.

The wind is falling more now.

Falling.

Falling.

The water is cold and will be colder—this current sweeps north.

More boats north.

The waves will decide, boat or not.

So soon? What ho?

Those rogues never turned our way before, unless to gull us. Stay low.

Let’s hullo them.

No—wait for a sign—

We should wait while sharks and the other fishy demons eat off our last three legs?

We should. That’s Smith at the bow, that villainous grogman, the keeper of the stories of brothers Bungleston and of pirates pale as turnips. From Luggams’ crew.

Friend or foe? I don’t remember.

Friend, friend—I don’t know. Someone we know.

You two, whatever you be doing in the drink swimming like the fish knew your names? Get on aboard and rest your fins.

What happened to your face?

Lightning.

It was not lightning. As true as I am the Reverend Baltrick and have run before many a sail on the open seas, never have I seen what I saw with Smith. It was a fish that hit him. It flew up and hit him across the nose on his way up the mast that last day we were becalmed off the Cape. A plague of fishes such as the Bible speaks of had flown onto the boat, even into his pockets and down his shirt. They flew in from all the heavens and one hit him.

Poor fish.

Aye, Smith even found fish in his bed a day or so later, didn’t you, Smith?

As you say it, Reverend. But the lightning did it.

He smelled to heaven.

I say it was lightning, Saul’s true lightning, that mess of fish coming at me in the air, the Lord’s will. The Lord knows. He sent a fish flying up out of the sea a’flapping to my face as sure as lightning.

The Lord? Is this the Smith that sailed the seven seas with Luggams and myself?

Yea, I be that Smith. And this be your brother from the takings?

Aye, and a fine pirate my brother was after he was hauled.

True pirates, drinking the sea in shifts, hanging onto that leg for hours.

Pray, put thy swords and the small knives in the chest there and drink some of our wee grog to stop your shaking from the cold of the deep. The cutlass chest is eight paces hence, more or less, put it there. That’s it.

Mind the pegleg.

Why, our thanks to you, Reverend Baltrick. The grog is good, not the burnt peas we drink that slavers make.

Well, we be not slavers. Have no fear of that. And no blow will sink us because we have cleared the sucking sump of the gates of hell and are bound over the farthest seas in Our Lord’s name back to our port. But now I must see to changing the course. Smith, thou wilt stand watch.

Baltrick, Baltrick—I believe I heard our mother speak of this Baltrick.

Could he be the Baltrick of the Heaven Sent, the preacher of the Seven Seas she did once have the acquaintance of, as they say?

This Baltrick knows no women.

None? Not even in the seeds of his youth? Our mother swore on her deathbed—

Reverend Baltrick is not the man of your mother’s bed, death or not.

Our mother did swear of many.

You have his very eyes, brother.

You can see that, with your one?

What are you two whispering?

We have much to be grateful for and thank the Reverend indeed.

The Reverend has it that you must attend the rigging now, with my help. There’s a loop that is bent wrong from the blow.

I’ll take the halyard.

So, Smith, how did you come into this service from Luggams’? To my memory, you left his boat just before we were wrecked.

It was just a matter of shifting my doss, you know, when nobody was looking. After Luggams came to nothing and a bad doubloon, owing to the fine crew he shipped, I quit him for a tighter lot. That is to say, I sail now for the Lord Almighty straight out of Boston Harbor even on the blackest of days, and in storms, in search of souls.

Our Smith, the pirate? I say it again but I can’t believe it.

I rescue pirates and return them to the Bosom of our Lord, or as the Judge sees fit.

Judge?

This one with the leg isn’t right, is he? Always wanting to repeat. Has he been lightning-hit as well as me?

He’s right enough, Smith. Go on with it.

My task is to steal the heinous souls of pirates back for God and Mammon, and on the occasion of a soul unrepentant or as a judgment against the people, the Reverend here sails them in and then the Judge tries them and hangs them.

For a bounty, of course.

The wise-legged one! He at least knows the cost of saving the souls of pirates for our Savior who both giveth and taketh away the way. Do not worry, we are not so far from land, a day’s journey, no more, and you too will soon be taketh away.

Smith!

The storm pulls hard when you have the Lord Almighty coming for you. Belowdecks, now.

We too be saved and sorry, and will be full of joy to abide in the searching for souls with you. Let us enter Boston in triumph, for the judgment of pirates other than ourselves!

It’s the eye patch no one will believe. You shan’t pass for naught but pirate.

I’ll pluck it off and offer my eye-hole.

It’s the patch and Boston harbor only a tide away, and the number of pirates we find who are scarce as you hereabouts, except after storms. And, of course, there’s the bounty. Stand just here on your pegleg—another point of the pirate.

I’m a watchmaker, not a pirate.

Reverend, they go not willingly to God.

No—not the irons again—

We hoist sail and wash the decks better than most. Our last captain—a Frenchman he was—thought well of our handling of the line. This hook I have be the best ballast for a sturdy knot.

To blows then!

Good for you, Smith—in one strike. But methinks you should have found a better set of shackles in port. What do
we go out for if we have only this soft tin—to rescue crippled sailors from their watery grave? Fetch the bit and the cord from the chest.

Not so tight.

Smith’s a blackguard, Reverend. I tell you in our sainted mother’s name.

Yes, perhaps he seems reformed at hand, but he’ll tow you to hell and back for your ship. Whilst ourselves, we are just poor boys afloat, rescued and homeless from the terrible storm.

Quiet, the two of you, or I’ll belay you both again with the “hand o’ God.”

Have pity. We are your sons indeed, sent by and by. Our very mother tells us Baltrick’s the one, aye, Baltrick, and we set sail to find him, no reason other than for the recovery of our father.

Prithee?

Oh, father!

Why did they have to hang Smith in such a dead wind? Row faster and the stench will lighten. I’ll watch the course.

I see nothing but the blasted moon of your back.

Just row and we’re bound to hit something.

Baltrick.

Sea wolves and jackanapes! No wonder Ma didn’t hold to him. I’m sure the heat of hate has already set his sail, if not the stink of Smith, Baltrick’s bonus.

Smith always did stink.

He stank up the whole of the colony. The gaoler told me the surgeons were wanting a try at him, to have a peek at his heart and suchlike but the gibbet was too soon fouled by crows dissecting on their own, having a look at the black heart themselves.

You are a one for disappointing that gaoler. He didn’t like Smith.

I sang when the noose came up.

And what be the tune? I may need it yet.

The song is on my tongue tip, it is there but I can’t tell you, it is gone the way they say it goes. But you can be sure I didn’t stand around trying to catch it again—I ran. Pray, how did you stall your gaoler’s fancy?

With the figures I put into the gaol wall using the spoon butt—“St. Peter Choosing the Keys.” My years of practice for the bone repaid me well. For every prisoner the gaoler said he would always get the cleverer, and I was the cleverest of all.

Aye. The burying you told him was.

Oh, but those eight buried silver bars, I say like I have laid eyes on them, even hauled them halfway around the world. Like pirates float to the beach on bars of gold or silver!

That would be a shipwreck.

I made mention to the gaoler of that fresh water running in the glen just outside the town. A right marshy place, I say. Then he tells the hangman I need time to repent and brings me double rations and forgets to close the door quite so hard as before. We be needing a new door for half a year now, he says and he lifts his eyebrows like they aren’t his own.

It’s the spoon you stole they’ll hang you for next time.

It’s the ring in my ear.

They have the teeth of pirates is what the woman called out from the hanging crowd. Look at their teeth, will you? They have the teeth of the islands, soft from the cane and the scurvy.

Never trust an innocent girl.

With us still heaving out of the sea. And Smith talking of the Lord as quick as he could.

It was his sister that didn’t like him, that was the poxed woman who called out. We did a bit of convincing with Baltrick too.

Just row a bit to my shoulder, I think I see the shine of the sea starting under that slice of the moon.

No. A squid jumping to the light.

These good town fathers chose to have a man hold a red hot iron just for stealing a chicken.

The gaoler followed close on me in the night, with a fat cudgel ready to put me in that hole he was going to dig for the treasure.

I saw bits of his shirt left on the thorn that keeps that harbor so quiet.

You saw him then?

I followed his shirt and stole up behind him and he nearly dropped his shovel, he was taken with me so sudden. I said, Here, I said, I am dead, and I gave the shovel back to him. The silver’s ten paces farther, I walked away saying. Pieces o’ nine, I heard him say while I turned to find you, pieces o’ ten. Like he was counting it already.

We must watch ourselves exact at this latitude or he’ll have us on the boil.

Unless he finds O’Henry’s chest.

Only O’Henry’s own mother knows the whereabouts of that chest and she is carving the rock that is over it with a teaspoon, keeping the leavings in a bag under her skirts. Besides, O’Henry turned Mohammedan before he left Luggams. You can hear him moaning in that part of the marsh,
My foreskin, oh my front piece.

Stop, stop. I haven’t laughed for a week.

It would be enough for the gaoler to find his gaol
empty of the pirate next to be hung, but for the gaoler to be found guilty of the unlawful stealing of a pirate’s treasure unlawfully got!

The judge will see to the finding—and then split it.

Maybe there are truly bars of silver buried in there, resting? With the trees, the mud, the easy confluence of drowned sailors and ships and O’Henry moaning in the marsh?

Our ploughed luck. And here’s more of it—we might as well be glued to the sand with this leadbottomed skiff of yours, it sits so heavy in the water against a tide like this.

A ship will come along, a better one than before.

There’s a tolling now.

Three. Time moved slow waiting for you to come out of the muck before I heard your whistle.