The Dead Men Stood Together (8 page)

It strolled in an ungainly fashion, completely at odds with the grace of its flight, and this only served to make us love it more. It was as comical as a goose as it waddled round the deck and we chuckled to see it.

In the air it had seemed a distant thing, but now it walked among us and we took it straight away to our hearts. All of us, at once. Or so I thought.

One of the crew, a good-natured joker from the Welsh mountains, stepped forward holding out a piece of salt cod. The crew clucked and murmured encouragement, like children trying to coax a kitten.

The albatross clicked its beak and cocked his head and waddled over to peck the morsel from his fingers. It tested it for a moment, then swallowed it whole. You could see it going down its neck.

‘Want some more?’ asked the sailor, and the albatross nodded its head in response. We all laughed and the albatross flinched at the noise and jumped back.

‘Put the food away, you fool!’ said a gruff voice behind me which I recognised immediately to be that of my uncle.

The crew – and the albatross too – turned as one to face him, the smiles slipping from their faces. My uncle stepped forward, holding his crossbow. I saw that it was loaded.

‘Put the food away,’ he repeated.

‘I give the orders on this ship,’ said the captain, pushing his way through. ‘And I’ll thank you to put that weapon down.’

My uncle did not move and did not take his eyes from the albatross. I turned to look at the captain. Then my uncle spoke again.

‘We are God knows where,’ he said, as though talking to fools. ‘When was the last time we saw land? What man here can say when it will next be that we can go ashore and take food on board? Or even if there be any food in this place? I’ll wager that –’

‘I said put the crossbow down!’ shouted the captain.

My uncle stared, his mouth still part-way open from speaking, his eyes narrowed to a fierce scowl. Slowly, he lowered the crossbow. The captain walked over to where he stood and looked him in the face.

‘If you ever again point that thing at any man aboard my ship, I will toss it in the sea and hang you from the yardarm. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Aye, captain,’ said my uncle after a pause.

The captain walked away and the men, after a while, returned to their previous high spirits and continued their attentions to the albatross.

My uncle stood alone, staring at them, the crossbow still loaded and cocked. I was the only one who looked at him. I was the only one who saw the look of madness in his eyes.

XV

The albatross came back every day and every day was greeted like a friend. And a good friend is what it turned out to be. The ice that had held us in its choking grip now began to crack and splinter.

As the albatross flew above our heads, the ice sheet gave out a loud groan and shattered. The ship lurched forward like a penned pony whose gate had just been opened.

Round and round, the albatross flew, its wide wings white against the black sky. It circled about the mainmast as though tied to the crow’s nest, and with each revolution the ice seemed to weaken.

Instead of a flat white plain, the ice sheet was now riven with cracks and the ship was floating free again, albeit still as yet trapped in chains of broken ice.

It took a while to sink in, but then a great roar went up and we hugged one another and jumped up and down, laughing and clapping each other on the back. There was a new warmth in the air. It began to melt the ice covering the ship, and icicles began to rain down on the deck, shattering into tiny twinkling fragments.

Sailors are a superstitious tribe and we were sure that the albatross was some spirit sent to help us. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? The bird had come; the ice had gone. There could only be one explanation.

This belief became only more devout when a breeze began to blow and grow and turn into a wind that filled the sails and puffed them out proudly. We cheered as the helmsman steered a course through the shattered ice floe.

Only my uncle refused to join this celebration of the bird. He could see there was little point in arguing as he was in a minority of one. It was clear from his face that his opinion of the albatross and the devotion of the crew had not changed.

I did not care. The bird was hope and I wanted hope. We headed north and left those seas of ice behind us. Each day the icebergs grew more scarce until, one day, the sea was entirely free of their wretched presence. I had almost forgotten what the wild free ocean looked like.

The albatross stayed with us. It was like it wanted to guide us safely home and I know that every man aboard – save for my uncle – prayed that it might never leave us, though I suppose we knew it must.

Those who were not working ignored their usual sports and stood calling up to the bird, beckoning it down until, eventually, the albatross seemed to give in to their requests and descended like an angel to join them and accept whatever scraps they offered.

It was so tame now that it would take the food from our hands and even permit us to touch its head. Nevertheless we were always respectful of the creature. I myself felt the fine feathers on its head and thought myself as blessed for doing so as had I been touching a holy relic.

I looked into its dark, kind eyes. It calmed me. For that moment all my worries and fears melted away.

But when I turned away, I saw my uncle standing in the shadow of the mainmast. I will never forget the look on his face. The madness I had noted days before seemed now to have seeped into his whole body. He simmered with it, like a scalding hot iron waiting to be touched by an unwary hand.

Perhaps I could have changed things then. Perhaps I should have run to the captain and spoken to him. Yet he was my uncle after all and, besides, how could I have known what he was about to do? In any case, I wonder if our fates were already mapped out.

XVI

I said nothing to the captain, out of loyalty to my uncle. I still had the ties of kinship with him but I certainly would never have sought out his company. Yet still I didn’t want to be the cause of any trouble to him.

We sailed on, all of us happy to pretend that nothing was now amiss – that all would be well in time so long as we could see the next few days out with the albatross as our mascot and guide.

This was not a simple thing, for although the ice was gone the mist remained, and though the ship was driven by a healthy breeze this breeze seemed not to have any influence on the terrible mist.

So on we sailed, blind beyond a few hundred yards, unable to see any horizon, wondering if the first thing we would see would be the jagged island or reef we wrecked ourselves upon.

If that uncertainty wasn’t bad enough, then the mist itself was terrible in its own right, for that whispering was always there in the background, however much we tried to shut it out. We knew it was an enchanted fog, and we knew that until we were free of it, we were not free of the curse that had pulled us south into the ice.

With this dread of the mist and what it meant always present, the younger of the crew, like me, were especially happy to see the albatross and always first to try to offer it some food whenever it came to rest aboard the ship. The captain didn’t shoo us back to work as he might have been expected to do, but understood the mood of his crew and went with it.

The older sailors who had seen this breed of bird before marvelled at this behaviour. They swore they had never ever seen the creatures land before, let alone come to a sailor’s call.

We felt blessed. We felt that this bird would be the key to our escape from the enchantment. And then, one day, as I was standing looking up at the albatross, I realised someone was next to me and, turning round, I saw my uncle.

His face was now so gaunt and his eyes so sunken that he was like a pale spectre of his earlier self. I flinched when I looked him in the face and he smiled wryly at my reaction.

‘Fear not,’ he said.

‘I’m not afraid,’ I replied, not altogether convincingly. ‘I was startled, that’s all.’

My uncle nodded and looked up at the albatross wheeling over our heads.

‘I’m sorry that we haven’t spoken much lately,’ I said.

He nodded again without taking his eyes from the bird. As soon as the words had left my mouth, I regretted them. I wasn’t sorry at all that I had not spoken to him, and he could tell that from my voice.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It matters not.’

He shook his head and smiled. It was something of his old wolfish smile and it cheered me to see it.

‘’Tis my fault, lad,’ he said. ‘I have been ill-humoured and out of sorts. I’m restless. Some men – like your father – love the sailing life, but I am only a mariner to travel to other lands. I care nothing for the sea. The sea is just the road to where I want to be.’

I nodded – not because I agreed, but because I understood what he meant. I felt something in between these two extremes. I had a burning curiosity to see new worlds, and I also had a great urge to know the sea as well as these old mariners, as well as my father.

‘I long for a fight,’ he said. ‘I know where I am in a battle.’

I smiled. He sounded so contented at this thought. The mist seemed to have closed in a little more and I was glad of the distraction.

‘Please don’t wish that on us,’ I said. ‘I’ll be content with a safe passage home.’

‘There was this one time,’ he said, ignoring me entirely, ‘we were in the mountains near Trebizond on the Black Sea. We had heard of a heathen temple there that had a casket so encrusted with diamonds that it hurt the eyes to look at it, even by candlelight.’

I eased back and let the story wash over me, trying to concentrate on my uncle’s words and not the whispering that seemed to have grown in volume as the mist rolled in around us.

‘But two days into our journey,’ he continued, ‘we were ambushed by a bandit king who captured us and told us that the following day at the sun’s highest point he would skin us all alive.

‘We managed to escape and, though the others were all for running away, I put the case for teaching that heathen a lesson. In the end I managed to persuade them that, if we did not, he would surely catch us, since they were on horse and we on foot.

‘We approached at night. They were nomads and his camp was a collection of domed tents, with a makeshift paddock where they kept their horses. There was a full moon and all was going well. We had mounted such attacks before and those men could walk on a carpet of dry twigs without making a sound. But suddenly a sentry saw us and reached for his horn.

‘I had one bolt left and knew that it must be a death shot. Anything less and the man would raise the alarm. I had no time to aim and only one chance. Without another thought I just lifted the crossbow and –’

‘You and your crossbow,’ said a sailor nearby. ‘Day after day, polishing it and oiling it and hugging it like it was your wife. Tale upon tale about how you can shoot through the eye of a needle. Enough! All these weeks and we’ve never seen you fire the damned thing except with your lying mouth.’

The movement was so rapid that I did not see his trigger finger move once the crossbow was raised to his eye, and no one could have stopped him even if we had known his intent. My uncle was every bit as good a shot as he’d said, curse him.

PART THE SECOND

XVII

A terrible silence followed the thud of the albatross hitting the deck. All heads turned to the sound and each face froze in horror at the sight of the bird they had come to love lying stretched out on the boards, its mighty wings flat against the deck.

I pushed myself forward and stared at the pathetic sight. It seemed smaller somehow in death. The joy it had given was gone and the gloom that replaced it worse for coming after it.

We mourned that bird as if it had been a parent or a child. The sadness was like a great weight that slowly descended on us.

But it was not until the captain stepped forwards and turned the bird over that the crossbow bolt was seen, sticking out of its chest, the feathers dark with blood.

A murmuring rose up and all faces turned towards my uncle. Several men strode towards him and overpowered him, then dragged him towards the captain, who stood near the albatross. The captain pointed at the fallen bird.

‘Is this your work?’ he said, his eyes half closed, his lips trembling, as though talking to my uncle disgusted him.

My uncle did not answer.

‘Speak, damn your eyes!’ said the captain. ‘I want to hear it from your own lips before I hang you! Did you do this?’

‘Hang me?’ snarled my uncle, struggling against the men who held him. ‘On whose authority? Since when did the killing of a bird become a hanging offence?’

‘This is my ship,’ said the captain, his face crimson red and his eyes bulging. ‘Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.’

‘No!’ said my uncle, struggling again. ‘I’ll not hang for the killing of a bird.’

‘Who is going to stop me?’ said the captain, looking round the crew. ‘Who will speak for you?’

My uncle did not turn to me nor did he call me. No one looked at me. And yet I felt as though by staying silent I shouted out at the top my voice, ‘Kill him! Hang him!’