Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (12 page)

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George became aware of a curious sound he could not place at first. It was a hollow rattling and rumbling that seemed to emanate from the very bowels of the ship, and he wondered whether it had drifted towards hidden rocks.

But he soon realised that this was not the case. The sound was not coming from the hull but from the holds, and he saw, emerging from every hatch and hole, a million hungry snails creeping slowly, inexorably forward.

*

Cathy’s face was even paler than before. I am sure I was in no better condition. I had always had an aversion to shellfish of any kind, quickening my step past the whelk and cockle stalls in the market, repelled by both their smell and appearance; it was a revulsion I feared this story would only compound.

‘Were you never tempted to go to sea, Ethan?’ said Thackeray, sitting back, and running his fingers through his raven hair. ‘Being as how you lived so close to her shores all your life and how these rooms have been filled with mariners and their tales, did you never want to venture forth and see what lies beyond that horizon?’

‘No,’ I lied. For how could I have gone to sea, leaving my father to cope alone and Cathy to deal with his drinking? What right had I to choose that path?

Thackeray nodded and smiled a sad smile that seemed to say that he guessed my thoughts, and though it was a sympathetic smile I still resented it.

‘Maybe it is for the best,’ he said. ‘For the oceans are well stocked with dangers of every species and it is an act of blessed fortune to see through a natural life.’

‘It was not cowardice that stopped me, if that’s what you think.’

‘Oh, do shut up, Ethan,’ said Cathy.

‘Now then.’ Thackery held up his hands to pacify me. ‘Don’t get yourself so riled. I did not mean to suggest anything of the sort. There are many kinds of bravery. It takes as much courage to bring a child into the world as it does to cross swords or sail into the teeth of a storm – more, maybe. I can see you are no coward, Ethan. No offence meant.’

‘None taken,’ I said after a pause. ‘Forgive me. I have my father’s temper.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Thackeray. ‘Your father. There is still no sign of him.’

‘He will be here soon enough. Never fear.’

‘Of course.’ Thackeray drained his glass.

‘You seem mightily interested in my father’s whereabouts,’ I said, despite Cathy’s shushing.

Thackeray smiled.

‘I have no interest in your father, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Besides, he might not be so welcoming as you and your fair sister. He has a temper, you say?’

‘No more than most men,’ I lied.

‘But what about the cat?’ said Thackeray with a mock puzzled expression. ‘I thought he almost killed it.’

‘Oh, but he was drunk,’ said Cathy by way of explanation and then clamped her hand over her mouth, realising that she had said too much.

‘Cathy!’ I said, louder and more roughly than I’d meant. Tears sprang to her eyes.

Thackeray poured himself another drink. I put my arm around my sister. She pushed me away.

‘My father is a good man!’ I said, turning to the sailor.

Thackeray nodded.

‘He can forget that sometimes when he drinks,’ I continued. ‘But at heart he is a good man.’

Something happened, though, in the saying of these words – which were passionately meant. I had the strangest sensation that I no longer believed what I was saying. I searched my mind for happy childhood memories, but my father made no appearance in them. I had convinced myself that drink had changed him, but had he ever been the good father I wanted him to be?

Thackeray ran his fingers through his still-wet hair.

‘As I say,’ he said in a bored voice, ‘I do not know the man. Your faith in him does you credit, Ethan. No doubt he is on his way home, safe and sound. But in the meantime shall I tell you another story?’

I opened my mouth to speak, but not quickly enough.

‘Oh, I was hoping you would,’ said Cathy, clapping her hands together.

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Mud

Ben and Peter Willis were twin brothers. They had been brought up on the north Norfolk coast and knew those creeks and marshes like they knew the pores and creases of their own grimy skin – skin that seemed to hold the stain of that mud in its every crevice.

It felt to Ben that they were tied to one another by some invisible bond. He could not remember a time when they had been more than a dozen yards apart. Peter regularly used the word ‘we’ when another person would have used ‘I’. He would say ‘we’re hungry’ or ‘we’re tired’ and simply assume that Ben shared these feelings, which, to Ben’s annoyance, he invariably did.

Ben had never felt truly alone. He had never felt that he existed as a single entity, independent from his brother. It was as if it took two of them to make a whole, and, without Peter, he was incomplete: a half-thing.

He had never expressed these concerns to Peter; in fact this secrecy was a form of rebellion, as it had always been assumed that they would share everything. Ben concealed his feelings whenever possible and considered every hidden grievance a small victory over the tyranny of twinhood.

But far from freeing him from these thoughts of being forever bonded to his brother, Ben had become obsessed with the notion that they were two opposing parts of a single personality. He had come to believe that Peter was the corrupt, venal and irksome part of himself, the tainted part of his own soul.

This was not a view that many who knew the twins would have shared. For the truth was that both the brothers were rogues, and if anyone had bothered to try to differentiate the degree of their delinquency, they would certainly have said that it was Ben rather than Peter who seemed the one most lacking in any redeeming qualities. For Peter did at least have charm. Granted, it was a charm that was manufactured at will as a distraction from his true character, much as a stage magician distracts the observer from his sleight of hand, and consisted mainly of an incongruous, dimpled smile, more suited to a choirboy or a gilded cherub, and a disarming honesty about his dishonest ways. But it was a charm that Ben entirely lacked.

Ben saw Peter as the demon on his shoulder who led him reluctantly and unwittingly towards misdeeds and wrongdoings he would otherwise have shunned. He attributed to his brother an almost supernatural ability to tempt and persuade that served as an excuse for his own craven and weak-willed nature.

Every time he stole, or lied, or struck some poor unfortunate with a cudgel or threatened them with the blade of his knife, he let himself believe that he would never have done so without the malevolent influence of his twin. Broken bones or broken promises, it was never his fault.

Peter was fond of smiling his dimpled smile and saying, ‘I’m right here, brother. Don’t you worry.’ When they were small it had been a comfort. Peter had always been the braver, always fearless in his defence of his brother. Now it sounded like a threat, like a life sentence.

Ben and Peter had gone to sea together, sailing aboard the merchant ships that plied their trade between Norfolk and the Low Countries. It had been an escape from a dull and joyless life, but every time a storm engulfed them, Ben reminded himself that this too had been Peter’s idea and that left to his own devices he might never have left the relative safety of dry land.

But whatever the truth, the twins were mariners now, and in spite of the dangers the life seemed to suit them well enough. Sailors were not entirely bound – or at least did not
feel
entirely bound – by the same rules as those ashore. The brothers were quick to take advantage of all the ‘opportunities’ that a sailor’s life provided.

Back in their home port of Lynn once more, Ben resentfully told himself that the meeting they were about to have with local smugglers was, again, solely Peter’s notion – though Ben’s hunger for the promised cash had, if anything, been keener than his brother’s.

The smugglers thereabouts were as secretive and mysterious as masons, but the brothers had a contact – a childhood friend – who had acted as a go-between. The Willis twins had arranged with Tubbs, the quartermaster aboard their ship, to load a boat with some of the contents of the hold while the captain was ashore in Lynn, being dined by the mayor.

At the appointed hour the boat was duly loaded and Ben and Peter climbed stealthily aboard and began to row towards the shore. It was late afternoon; the sun was low in the western sky and the sea was as smooth and burnished as a silver platter; the noise of the oars and the call of distant curlew were all that broke the tranquillity of the scene.

This peacefulness was all external in Ben’s case, for he had a rising dread of meeting the smugglers; smugglers thought little of murder, especially when it came to boys like him and Peter.

Peter, by contrast, seemed to be positively enjoying himself, grinning from ear to grubby ear.

‘Here we are,’ he said, stopping rowing for a moment and letting the boat rock to and fro on the grey waters. He cupped his hands around his mouth and made a startling impression of an oyster catcher.

From out of the marshes came the sound of a curlew.

‘They’re here,’ Peter said, rowing once more, and he steered into a narrow creek, hidden from the sea by a mud bank. ‘Come on,’ he said, tying the boat to an ancient, lichen-encrusted stave and jumping on to the bank.

They covered the merchandise they carried in a rough blanket and pushed the boat into an even narrower channel so that it was entirely hidden from view.

Then Ben found himself, as usual, following Peter into the unknown – up a rough track towards a small tavern, whose flint walls faced out to the sea, bathed in the warm low sunlight. Black smoke coiled from massive chimneys.

Walking into the Black Horse was like walking into a cave, and it took Ben a while to see anything at all. Slowly, out of the gloom, a stone-flagged floor appeared, a low black-beamed ceiling, a dark wooden bar and a burly, grim-faced barman.

‘Gen’lemen?’ he asked, in a rasping voice that sounded like a threat.

‘We’re looking for Daniel Hide.’

‘Never heard of him,’ said the barman. ‘What are you drinking?’

‘If he comes by, tell him Peter Willis and his brother were here looking for him.’ He tapped Ben on the arm and they made to leave.

‘Hold your horses,’ said a voice from a room to their right.

Ben turned to see a man step out, ducking under the low doorway as he did so. The stranger took a deep breath, half closing his eyes, and then grabbed Peter by the throat.

‘Just the two of you?’ he asked quietly, looking at Ben. Peter choked and grimaced, turning beetroot.

‘Aye,’ said Ben.

‘You weren’t followed?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Aye,’ said Ben, looking at Peter, whose eyes were rolling back into his skull.

‘Good,’ said the smuggler, letting go of Peter. He staggered back, holding his neck and gasping like a cat with a fur ball. The smuggler whistled and five men appeared from the shadows.

‘Let’s see what you have then,’ he said, putting a battered hat on his head and walking towards the door. Ben cast a worried glance at Peter, who, to his amazement, was smiling.

‘Don’t worry, brother,’ he said with a cough. ‘I’m right here.’

They took the smugglers to the boat and Hide, their leader, carefully examined the merchandise, sampling the brandy and tobacco like a connoisseur. When he had satisfied himself of the quality and nodded his approval to his men, he turned to Ben and Peter.

‘That’s good stuff,’ he said.

‘Then we are in business?’ said Peter.

‘But here’s the thing,’ said the smuggler with a sigh. ‘What’s to stop my colleagues and I simply gutting you like a couple of herring and taking these here goods of yours?’

‘Because,’ said Peter coolly, ‘there wouldn’t be any more.’

‘So?’ said the smuggler. ‘We got lots of suppliers.’

‘Of gut-rot gin maybe,’ said Peter. ‘I can get you port wine. I can get you silk. I can get you opium.’

The smuggler grinned.

‘I like you,’ he said, nodding at Peter. ‘But I don’t like you,’ he said, turning to Ben. ‘Twins ain’t natural and there’s something about you . . .’