Call of the Raven

by Smith, Wilbur

  ‘Mr Lanahan,’ Sterling said to the mate. ‘Fetch the muster book, and enlist Mr Sinclair as a light hand.’

  ‘But . . .’ Lanahan’s face burned with hatred. ‘He is a troublemaker.’

  ‘That was an order, Mr Lanahan.’ Sterling turned to Mungo. ‘I do not doubt your qualities. Any man who would go a round with Tippoo cannot lack bravery; and I do not think I have ever seen him bested in a fight. But remember this. On any ship, a captain is second only to God. And God has no interest in the Blackhawk. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Then welcome aboard.’ He picked up a holystone and tossed it to Mungo. ‘You may begin by clearing up the mess you have made of my ship.’

  On a bright August morning, the Blackhawk’s crew cast off the lines and sailed with the tide. The holds of the clipper were loaded with bales of cotton brought up from New Orleans, crates of cigars from Cuba and Richmond, lumber from the mountains of western Virginia, and mail destined for Europe. At all points of wind, the Blackhawk sailed with a speed that far exceeded the bulkier packet ships to which Mungo was accustomed. With guidance from the Maryland pilot, they made twelve knots of headway down the Chesapeake under topsails and mains, and crossed the bar at Old Point Comfort during the first dogwatch of the second day.

  When they saw the blue horizon, the crew on the spar deck and high up on the yards let loose a cheer. The captain issued the command: ‘Make full the sails. Mr Lanahan, take her out to sea.’

  By the time the sun sank into the western clouds, they had left the coast far behind. None of the crew seemed to notice the disappearance of the land as they were busy with their duties, but Mungo did. He was up the mast working on the topsail yard – Lanahan had wasted no time sending him as high as possible – and some premonition made him glance back just in time to see the grey shadow of his homeland wink out of existence as it crossed the horizon.

  The ship heeled over in the breeze, so that when he looked down all he saw below him was foaming water. Gripping the mast one-handed, he took the locket from around his neck and held it in his fist. It hurt too much to look at the picture inside. He wanted to open his hand, let it drop into the sea and wash his pain away.

  He held on tight. He would not let Camilla go. He would nurse the memory, let it sharpen his thirst for revenge until he had destroyed Chester Marion.

  Something wet stung his cheek. He thought it must be a drop of rain borne on the wind, but when he wiped it away it was warm to the touch. A tear. He shook his head in disbelief. He had never cried in his life.

  He put the locket around his neck again and let it drop inside his shirt. Give me the keys of fortune, he prayed, and grant me vengeance.

  In the immense emptiness of the ocean, time was governed by the watch and whistle, and the weeks disappeared into the rhythm of night and day. There was occasional excitement when a sail was sighted, or when a quarrel erupted that the bosun had to break up. Otherwise the routine might be interrupted when the captain issued a call to quarters for a drill with small arms or cutlasses. Mostly, the hours at sea went by without event, the boredom broken only by the busyness of everyday tasks.

  As a fo’c’s’le hand, Mungo slept in the hammocks with the men and boys. Of all the challenges of the sailing life, it was the lack of privacy that he found the most difficult. Sleeping, eating, writing in his journal, even shitting in the heads, took place in the presence of other men. Mungo craved the free time he spent in the netting near the tip of the bowsprit, as the jib billowed above him, reading everything he could find on navigation and ship handling. He had thrown himself into the study of seamanship with a passion. At first it was to distract his mind from the thoughts of Chester and Camilla that weighed constantly, but soon his zeal caught Sterling’s attention. The captain allowed Mungo to borrow books from his cabin, and let him practise reading the sextant and measuring their course. After his voyages to England, Mungo had thought himself a fairly competent navigator; now he realised how much he still had to master.

  The men treated Mungo warily. A landlubber who took to the ship like an old salt; a gentleman who shipped as a common seaman; a fighter who did not pick fights: they did not know what to make of him. A few misinterpreted his good manners as weakness, and tried to bully him, but they quickly learned their mistake. So they mostly left him alone. Even Tippoo, the master gunner whom Mungo had fought, kept out of his way and showed no interest in prolonging the quarrel. If anything, he watched Mungo with a certain wary respect.

  The only man on the ship who thoroughly hated Mungo was, unfortunately, the one best placed to make his life miserable. Lanahan, the first mate, had not forgiven Mungo for the card game, nor for embarrassing him in front of the men and the captain. He put Mungo in his watch, where he could give him the worst tasks, always ready with a rope end if Mungo’s work was less than flawless. He saw Mungo’s nautical studies as a personal insult, presuming it was an attempt to supplant him. If he ever caught Mungo reading a book, he would immediately invent some new chore for Mungo to do.

  Mungo knew the mate was trying to goad him into insubordination. He could see it in Lanahan’s eyes. One slip, and Mungo would be spread-eagled on the grating having his back ripped open with a cat o’ nine tails. Mungo would not give Lanahan that satisfaction. He took every humiliation and insult without complaint. He was obedient, hard-working, and relentlessly cheerful.

  It did not help Lanahan’s cause that Mungo proved to be a natural sailor. When Lanahan sent him aloft to work the sails in high winds, Mungo kept his balance on the yards like a cat. When he ordered Mungo to haul on some obscure line, or tie a complicated knot, Mungo was always able to oblige. Far from impressing the first mate, Mungo’s ability only deepened his fury.

  Mungo was not complacent. He knew that he was stoking Lanahan’s anger, and that sooner or later it would erupt against him. All he could do was wait for it.

  The weather remained fair through the weeks of September and early October. The wind blew steadily out of the south-west at twelve to sixteen knots, and there were only a handful of scattered squalls. These were just enough to top up the ship’s freshwater stores, and allow the crew a bath in the lee scuppers to wash the salt off their skin. For long stretches of time the Blackhawk matched the pace of the wind, creating calm on deck, even as the arrow-shaped hull crashed through the waves and sent out geysers of spray.

  On the twenty-first of October, a shout came from the foremast yards.

  ‘Land ho!’

  It was Mungo’s watch, and he was on deck tending to the ship’s compass. As soon as he heard the shout, he detached the spyglass his father had given him from his belt and went to the rail, leaning out over the water and searching the wedge of light between the lowest studding sail and its yardarm for sight of the land. He could smell it in the air – the richness of trees and soil mixed with the tangy brine of the sea – but he couldn’t see it.

  He ran to the mainmast ratlines and climbed to get a better view. The higher he went, the more he felt the rocking of the ship beneath him. The Blackhawk was rolling on a strong northern swell, and the mainmast was tracing a path through the air like the sweep of a clock’s pendulum. He was ten feet past the fighting top when he heard a cry overhead. A second later, there was a crack of parting lines and the slap of buckling canvas. A sail had given way. Mungo arched his neck and stared into the clouds above him. A seaman was clinging to the bare pole of the skysail yardarm as it twisted free of its brace on the weather side. Meanwhile, the sail, shorn of its rigging, was flapping uselessly alee. Two other riggers were wrestling with the canvas on the yard below, but the first, whose clumsiness had most likely caused the accident, was scrambling to regain his footing one hundred and fifty feet above the deck.

  ‘Secure the brace!’ Mungo yelled, pointing at the severed line as it whipsawed about in the wind, whistling uncomfortably close to Mungo’s head. ‘I’ll see to a replacement.’

  But the rigger wasn’t l
istening. He was clutching the yardarm for dear life, groping for a way to support himself. He could not find it. His whole weight dangled from the yard, and his cold fingers could not get a grip. Inexorably, he was sliding off.

  Mungo let go of the ratlines with his right hand and reached out over the abyss, grasping for the trailing end of the brace. The severed line writhed like an angry snake. It was almost in range. Then the ship heeled over on a large swell, and the brace swung away from Mungo’s fingertips. Mungo gulped in a lungful of air and waited for the ship to recover, his breathing ragged, his heart pounding in his chest. The brace swung back towards him, and he lunged again to grab it. This time his fingers touched it, but a gust of wind blew the line out of reach once more.

  By now, Mungo and the rigger were both exhausted. Mungo knew it wouldn’t be long before the Blackhawk hit a jarring wave and one of them – or both – lost his grip and fell. Mungo watched the brace jerk in the wind. It was tantalisingly close, but not close enough. He thought about giving up. He heard the seamen on the ratlines below, hauling up replacement rigging. When they arrived, they would fasten a new brace and steady the yardarm. But for the rigger above him, it would almost certainly be too late.

  Mungo wiped his hands on his breeches and anticipated the motion of the ship as if it was an extension of his body, waiting for the moment when the mast swung past vertical in the direction of the brace. He coiled his muscles until every sinew was taut and – when the forces of wind and roll were just right – he leaped into space.

  For an instant, he felt as if he was flying. He was so high above the sea that he could almost touch the clouds. Then the brace was in his hands, and his downward arc turned upwards, the ship reached the end of its port-side roll, and brought him swinging back in the direction of the mast.

  He knew he had only one shot to make this work. His hands were about to slip and his arms had endured nearly all the punishment they could bear. He saw the ratlines flying towards him, the mast looming beyond them. His trajectory wasn’t ideal, but it was close enough. Then, to his horror, Mungo sensed the yardarm turning above him as the weight of his body applied a torque on the brace. Instead of swinging towards the mast, he was now rotating around it. In desperation, he tensed every muscle in his abdomen and thrust his legs out towards the ratlines as they sailed past. His left foot caught the outer rope in the ladder and arrested his swing as pain exploded in his arm sockets. Suspended between the yardarm and the ratlines, his body had become a makeshift brace, his muscles now bearing the pressure of the wind on the untethered sail.

  He wanted to scream at the seamen to cut the lines and let the canvas fall away, but the words escaped him. He wriggled his left foot into the netting and followed that with his right foot, establishing the anchor, as the ship reached the limit of its starboard roll and the forces changed again. He held the pose for long seconds, every nerve in his frame racked by agony. He felt as if he was being ripped in two. He could not hold on much longer.

  Without warning, he felt a strong hand on his calf and another taking the fabric of his waistline. Through vision blurred by pain, he saw Tippoo’s face looking over him. The strain on his shoulders slackened as the master gunner took the brace from his sweat-slicked hands.

  ‘Hold on,’ Tippoo grunted. ‘I let you go now.’

  Mungo clasped the netting with trembling fingers and collapsed into it as if it were a hammock. Tippoo tied a knot into the end of the severed brace and took a fresh line from a seaman below him, lashing the tips together. The seamen below took up the slack, running the replacement brace through the blocks on the mizzenmast and lashing them to a cleat on deck. Only when the brace was secure did Mungo look up at the skysail yards. Now that the yardarm was no longer turning around the mast, the rigger had calmed himself sufficiently to find the foot-rope and regain his balance. His exhausted body was draped over the yardarm, his complexion pale.

  Mungo turned to Tippoo. ‘I owe you a debt.’

  ‘If not for you, we would have to swab him off the deck. Now, he gets only the cat.’

  ‘The cat?’ Mungo asked, finding his voice again, as strength flowed back into his body.

  ‘He makes a mistake. He pays.’ Tippoo shrugged his mountainous shoulders, and the muscles below his neck rippled. ‘At least he is alive.’

  Sterling supervised the discipline with the rigour of a court martial, except that he was the sole authority charged with prosecution, judgement and sentencing. He took evidence from the seamen on the watch, and, when all were satisfied with the rigger’s guilt, he dispatched Lanahan to retrieve the cat o’ nine tails from his stateroom and ordered the rigger to stretch out on the deck before the mainmast.

  ‘A dozen lashes will make you more attentive to your duties,’ he said, catching Mungo’s eye, ‘and spare Mr Sinclair the trouble of having to save your sorry life again.’

  Mungo said nothing. When the first mate returned with the cat, Sterling took the fearsome instrument in hand and paced the deck in front of the rigger. He ran the nine thongs through his fingers while reminding all the crew of their obligations to preserve the safety of the ship. Then he handed the cat to Tippoo and went aft.

  Tippoo removed his tunic and stood at the rigger’s feet, while the man begged for mercy, his face to the ground. Tippoo brought the cat down on the man’s bare back. In an instant, his white skin turned scarlet. The seaman yelped in pain and began to sob. Tippoo struck a second time, leaving welts in a different direction, then a third time with a backhanded motion that flayed the rigger’s skin. Lanahan counted out the lashes until, on the ninth stroke, the rigger fell into unconsciousness. By the time Tippoo finished, the seaman’s flesh was a grotesque mess, scored and blood-smeared.

  ‘Get him to the infirmary,’ Lanahan barked, ‘and wash down the deck.’

  Mungo made his way aft. His nerves were still wound tight from his exertions atop the mast, along with the ache of strained and knotting muscles. The captain met him by the hatch, his eyes aglow with displeasure beneath the brim of his bicorn hat.

  ‘Mr Sinclair,’ he said, ‘you continue to astonish me. One minute I find you indispensable, and the next you act like an imbecile.’

  Mungo frowned. ‘I thought you would be glad I saved his life.’

  ‘By risking yours,’ the captain snapped. ‘And Tippoo’s as well. If you had not been so lucky, I might have lost three men.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘The fact that you succeeded does not justify what you did. You do not risk your life for anything, unless I give the order. On the high seas, chivalry is not a virtue and I did not take you on to be a hero. Do I make myself clear?’

  Mungo nodded, his face as blank as it had been at the poker table. ‘Aye, Captain.’

  ‘Then see to your duties.’

  Camilla stayed locked in the tobacco store for three days. She lived on a knife-edge of hope and despair: terrified every time she heard the lock turn in case it was Chester or Granville coming to rape her again; hoping against hope that it would be Mungo.

  They gave her a slop bucket, a cup of water and a plate. In the August sunshine, the storeroom became an oven. She was constantly parched; she couldn’t even clean herself after Chester’s assault. She had to live in the same tattered dress he had torn off her, his blood and fluids still crusted on her skin.

  Then, on the third morning, one of Granville’s men came for her. Without a word, he grabbed her by her hair and yanked her to her feet. He ripped her dress off her. She started to scream, then suddenly choked it off as a wave of water hit her body. She wiped her eyes. The man was standing by the doorway, a smirk on his face and a bucket in his hand.

  ‘Boss said to clean yourself up,’ he said. ‘We’re going.’

  He tossed her a clean dress. He stood by the door, his hand on the revolver in his belt, watching her as she wiped herself down and pulled on the new clothes.

  She emerged, blinking, into the daylight and followed her captor to the big house.
Carriages were drawn up on the driveway, half a dozen at least. At the front was one Camilla had never seen before, with gilded woodwork and a pair of fine black horses in harness. A jab from Granville pushed her towards it.

  ‘Inside, quick,’ he ordered.

  She stepped up and through the door. The inside smelled of new paint and fresh leather. Pulled velvet curtains draped the windows and made it dark.

  ‘Don’t make a sound,’ said Granville.

  She perched on the edge of the plush seat, too frightened to sit comfortably. The curtains screened the outside world, but there was a small crack where they did not quite meet in the middle. She leaned forward and put her eye to the gap.

  A group of men had come out of the house and were standing on the lawn in front of the portico. She saw Chester and Granville, and half a dozen others all very respectably dressed in top hats and dark suits, smoking cigars. None of them paid her any notice.

  Old Tate, the butler, stood by them with a silver tray of drinks. Chester took one and toasted his companions.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘To the new owners of Windemere plantation.’

  The man opposite smiled. With a shock, Camilla recognised him. It was Jeremiah Cartwright, the militia officer who had captured Mungo and taken him to jail. Now she looked closer, she recognised the others, too. They were all old friends and neighbours of the St Johns, men she had seen often as guests at Windemere.

  Cartwright raised his glass to Chester in return.

  ‘You are a man of your word, Marion, I give you that. When you told me you could deliver up Windemere, I confess I had my doubts, but you proved me wrong. You are one tough son-of-a-bitch.’

  ‘For a bankrupt estate, you drive a hard bargain,’ complained the man next to him – an older man with huge silver whiskers, named Horniman.

  ‘Worth every penny,’ said Cartwright. ‘I know the Bible says thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ass, but by God I have wanted this land for thirty years. I thank you for delivering it to me – even at the exorbitant price I have just paid you.’