Shark Island (32 page)

Wiki left the unstable stone slab, with its mute evidence of where Alphabet Green had hidden the bullion, to stand by one of the tallest upright headstones. Lieutenant Smith found his place in the book, and then droned on and on while insects whined, birds chirped, and the sun beat down. At long last he ran to a stop, and the grave-digging party was at work again, tossing dirt into the hole. The thudding as clods hit the coffin lid and then the shovels smacked them down seemed unnaturally loud.

To get away from the unsettling noise Wiki left the burial ground altogether, heading down the track to where some men were wrenching a plank from the wreck of the
Hero.
As he neared, Wiki could hear them drilling out treenails. The
Hero
's running aground had probably happened at night, he thought, and definitely during a gale, because she'd been run up so hard that the bowsprit was lost in the scrub. It had been an act of great courage and desperation on the part of her master—whoever that brave captain had been.

Annabelle had confirmed, too, that her cousin had been the supercargo of the
Hero,
and that he'd fled to Pernambuco in the sloop's boat with the others. Wiki remembered how weather-beaten Alphabet had looked, undoubtedly a heritage of that passage, and wondered what had happened to the other seven men in the boat, along with their knowledge of where the bullion had been hidden. Had Green bought them off, or had he got rid of them by some other means? Wiki remembered the savage look on his face as he'd attacked, and grimly thought that the second was the more likely option.

As he arrived on the beach he heard a cheer as the plank came free from the sloop. Borne by willing shoulders onto a flat patch of grass, it was energetically attacked by the boatswain and carpenter, who strove with their adzes to turn it into a match for the gap in the
Annawan
hull—wider at the bow end, and narrowing amidships. The funeral party was straggling down the trail now. Hearing the commotion on the beach, the seamen broke away from the procession, running eagerly to join in the work.

The day progressed with the crashing of sledgehammers as the replacement plank was slammed into place. By evening a caulking gang was dangling over the side of the schooner on lines, working with their wedges, caulking stuff, and tar. The work on the schooner was very obviously coming to a culmination—so Lawrence J. Smith called for a conference.

It should be obvious to everyone, he declared when they were all assembled, that nailing a few sheets of copper over the replacement plank and then letting out the cable so the schooner could tip back to her rightful level could be managed with ease by the
Annawan
men who were left, plus the cutter's men under the supervision of Lieutenant Forsythe, with Wiki Coffin to assist. The murderer had been uncovered, executed, and properly put to rest—or so he pointed out—and there was no reason whatsoever for the two navy vessels to linger here. They could rest the night, and then they must weigh anchor.

As the early sun rose Wiki stood glumly on the quarterdeck of the
Swallow,
watching the eight sealers come on board with their sea chests on their shoulders. Folger and Bill Boyd, he noted, were bringing their tool chests, as well—it was the first time he realized that they owned their own tools. He wondered how they felt about their abrupt transition to the navy. The previous day he had noticed the sealing gang conferring in a huddled group at least twice, just as they had after their sea chests had been searched. There was the same surly, hostile air about them, and he had felt a touch of the foreboding that had assailed him every time he had pictured the entire complement of the
Annawan
boarding the
Swallow
for the passage to Rio. But there were only eight of them, he emphatically thought—and it shouldn't take many days for George to rendezvous with Captain Wilkes.

Nevertheless, he said to George, “You'll take care?”

“I won't have the chance to do anything else, with that panicky little prawn in command of the other ship.”

Rochester was standing in his favorite pose with his hands lightly clasped behind his back, but his expression, as he watched Smith take on six of the brig's men, was not benign at all. One of them was the
Swallow
's cook, which meant that Stoker would have to be cook as well as steward. George, though he had simmered on the verge of open rage, hadn't dared argue, knowing that a highly biased version of the events at Shark Island was going to be poured into Captain Wilkes's ears whatever happened, and rebellion would only make it worse.

He turned his glare to the
Annawan
and said, “I wish the poisonous little bastard had seen reason and given us one more day—just to make sure that she doesn't go back to leaking the instant she's on even keel again.”

Wiki said, “She won't.”

“Nevertheless,” said George, but didn't finish the sentence. Instead, he looked at Wiki and then away, saying again, “I'll try to make sure that we don't get more than a day's sail ahead of you. You have the course I gave you?”

“Aye,” said Wiki.

“You don't have to stay, you know. Forsythe wouldn't care if you didn't.”

“I know that,” Wiki said wryly. But he didn't want to leave until he'd somehow got Annabelle to forgive him—and he thought he knew the way to do it.

Forsythe was conning the
Flying Fish
out to the open sea. Lawrence J. Smith had weighed his certain knowledge of the southerner's terrifying seamanship against his fears of unknown reefs and shoals, and had opted for the devil he knew best. Accordingly, the cutter followed, and so Wiki was able to stay on the
Swallow
until the two vessels had made the other side of the shark-fin-shaped headland.

Then it was time to leave.
“E hoa,”
he said. He and George shook hands in their special way, forearms linked, and then hit each other hard many times on the shoulder, as
pakeha
men who are great friends do when meeting or parting. Wiki dropped a canvas bag with a few possessions into the cutter, where his
taiaha
was already carefully stowed, and then picked up the parrot cage. Stoker had been almost as tragic at being parted from the parrot as he was at being relegated to the position of cook-cum-steward, but Wiki was determined to give the bird to Annabelle and watch her joy and relief as she released it. In his mind, he could see the smile in her eyes. That, he thought, was when she'd relent and forgive him.

“You're set?” said Forsythe, at the tiller. Wiki nodded, remembering belatedly that he had forgotten to tell George where the bullion was hidden but not really caring, and they were off. Within instants, it seemed, the
Swallow
and the
Flying Fish
were out of sight.

In a remarkably short time they were back in the cove, where Festin was eagerly waiting. “Ho, ho,” he said when Wiki waded onto the beach with the parrot cage in one hand. “
Pâté à la râpure
tonight, no?” he joked. “Bloody good.” Being such an admirer of Forsythe's style, he had opted to join the cutter's camp rather than stay with the
Annawan
men where he properly belonged, and
pâté à la râpure
was the name in his language for what Constant Keith referred to as chicken stew pie.

“He's not for eating,” Wiki said firmly, and hung the cage from a branch of a nearby tree. The parrot, he noticed, seemed to like it. The bird looked almost as good as new, though its beak was peeling in bits like the skin of a rotten orange. As Stoker had predicted, the scales over its eyes were coming loose. Then Wiki turned and stretched, looking at the curling lace of the surf on the damp gold sand and the turquoise of the lagoon beyond. It was an idyllic spot, but he couldn't wait to leave. When the cutter's men were ready for the afternoon's work, Wiki went with them to the schooner to help the remaining crew, who were in the hold shoveling the ballast from one side to the other.

Already, the hull was beginning to creak as the
Annawan
tried to set herself back on an even keel, so Wiki and the cutter's men boarded the raft and started letting out the cable. With more cracking noises the schooner began to roll. More shoveling, more slacking of the hawser, and her masts began to revolve against the sky. Then evening came, and the masts were upright—and in the morning her holds were still dry.

“Goddamn it,” observed Forsythe in disgust. “If that pompous little bugger had waited just twelve more hours, we could've sailed with the
Swallow.
”

Thirty-six

While the cutter's men were getting the boat ready for departure in the morning, Wiki scrambled over the rockfall, finding Hammond and the remaining
Annawan
crew assembled on the beach. All the tents save Annabelle's had vanished, their contents removed to the brig, and hers was being taken down. Hammond was talking to Annabelle, but as Wiki came up he turned and walked away. It was Wiki, then, who helped her into the boat, though her hand was stiff and unwelcoming, and he was the one who helped her back on board the schooner.

Then she and Wiki were alone on the deck, and the beach was quite empty. Hammond and the
Annawan
crew had trailed up the cliff, disappearing from sight at the first steep bend. Were they going to the graveyard to check the whereabouts of the bullion, ready to retrieve it when the cutter had gone? Perhaps.

Annabelle said matter-of-factly, “So again we part.”

“Aye,” said Wiki, hunting for a note of sadness in her voice but not finding it. She was wearing a plain blue cotton dress with big front pockets in the skirt, a workaday outfit cinched at her waist with a leather belt, but looked breathtakingly lovely. Wiki wondered what would happen if he held out his arms to her, but didn't quite dare do it, so instead he looked at the sky on the eastern horizon. It threatened a storm, but Forsythe was determined to sail.

He saw Forsythe clambering over the rockfall, his rifle over one shoulder and a sack of flour in the other hand. Then the big Virginian was striding along the beach. Behind him came Robert Festin, carrying the parrot cage in one hand and a molasses keg on his shoulder.

Wiki heard Annabelle's sucked-in breath. When he looked at her, she was dead white, and was beginning to tremble. Thinking he understood her distress, he said softly, “Don't be afraid. When you release the bird, Ezekiel's spirit will fly away, too.”

She made a strange noise, halfway between a sob and a laugh, but said nothing. Taking a boat to the raft, Festin and Forsythe clambered across it and then on board, and Wiki went to meet them as they climbed over the rail.

Robert Festin put down the birdcage, carried the molasses keg to the hatchway by the forward house, and jumped down the ladder to the between-decks space. After he'd stowed the keg Forsythe handed down the sack of flour, and then, as Wiki watched through the aperture of the hatch, Festin stacked it by the bags of stores that had already been loaded.

Looking up at Wiki and beaming broadly, he said, “
Pataka,
ha?”

Wiki frowned. For some reason the fine hairs on his neck were bristling.

He said, “What do you mean?”

Festin, below him, waved an arm around the between-decks steerage area, and said, “
Pataka.
Pantry.” Then, still grinning smugly, he mounted the ladder to arrive onto the deck the way Wiki had seen him emerge before, his head first, then his broad shoulders, and his spindly little legs last of all.

Wiki said numbly, “
That's
what you call the pantry? The between-decks storage?”

“
Pataka
pantry, exactly.”

“You were
there
—between decks—when Captain Reed was killed?”

“Aye. Not the goddamned galley, no.”

“But Alphabet Green…?”

“Ah.” Festin grinned. “In goddamned galley, he.”

“Jesus Christ,” Wiki whispered.
“It was you!”

Forsythe said alertly, “What the hell is this?”

“Robert Festin was the man on the quarterdeck!”

“Just quick look,” Festin protested. “To see what crash meant, crash on cabin floor.”

Wiki echoed blankly, “You heard a crash in the cabin?”

“Aye, big bump in the cabin. Me jump up after hatch, have quick look, see Mrs. Reed running, she get to galley, she turn round, I quick back down hatch. Back to
pataka,
aye.”

“And what did she say before she turned round?”

“To Alphabet Green?”

“Aye.”

In his antique French, Festin said,
“Je l'occist!”

Wiki shut his eyes, translating Festin's sixteenth-century language into Annabelle's more modern tongue, saying to himself,
“Je l'ai tué!”
He opened them and stated tightly, “
‘Je l'ai tué'
is what she really said, isn't it.”

His face round with surprise, Festin nodded.

Forsythe said, “How the hell do you know that?”

Because, Wiki thought, da Silva had laughed that what she had said had sounded like
tu-whit-tu-woo,
the call of an owl.
Je l'ai tué—I have killed him!
That was what Annabelle had gasped to Alphabet Green as she'd run up to the galley door.

Then she had spun around and run back—why?

Something—a sound—warned him, sent the hairs lifting on the back of his neck. Wiki whirled. Annabelle was holding the birdcage over the rail, and shaking it so violently that the parrot fell off its perch. Wiki heard it squawk, and saw it beat its wings in fright.

Forsythe's voice said again, “What the
hell
is going on?”

Wiki said numbly, “She did it. She killed her husband. She murdered Ezekiel Reed.”