Governor Dupont, flanked by around a dozen surly, unshaven soldiers, led the priest through the small town to the official residence. The governor’s mansion was impressive from a distance, but when Father Bertrand got closer, he saw that it was a shoddy, whitewashed structure. Like everything official on Sainte Isabel, it was third-rate. But at least inside, the foul odors of the town were less obvious. Wildflowers in pots stood in every room; an attempt to make the air less noxious.
The governor led the gray-haired priest into what seemed to be a study, judging from a few bookshelves and furnishings. Father Bertrand took the seat indicated, opposite the representative of His Majesty King Louis the Fourteenth. Dupont, a corpulent man of around thirty, settled into his chair with a sigh and offered his guest some heavily watered wine.
“A lousy vintage, I’m sorry to say,” Dupont added, “and the supply is erratic, but we take what we can get out here.”
“Thank you,” said Bertrand. “I will take a little to clear the dust from my throat.”
A slave who had been standing by, inert as the furniture, sprang into action, and poured the priest a drink. The governor waved the slave away and ordered him to shut the door when he left.
“And do not dare to listen outside the door, you mangy dog,” Dupont warned. “Or there will be a flogging. You know I do not jest!”
The slave muttered something obsequious and vanished. The governor stared at the closed door for a moment, then drank his wine in one go. Bertrand put his glass down after taking a single mouthful. The diluted wine was unpleasantly bitter, with an odd aftertaste. The priest wondered how pure any water could be in this flyblown place. Not for the first time, he wished he could be back in France.
“I am still not clear why you have sent for me,” Bertrand said. “Sainte Isabel is a small outpost, and I have duties aplenty in Martinique.”
Dupont gazed at his guest for a long moment, then asked him how many qualified exorcists there were in the French New World. Bertrand laughed, then realized the man was serious. He began to protest that ghosts and devils were of less concern to him than the very real evil that men do of their own volition. Dupont interrupted him by slamming a flabby hand onto his desk.
“What do you know of Lemaitre?” he demanded. “What do you know of demons, and the diabolical bargain the man is said to have struck?”
Bertrand felt his heart sink. He had already known that many of Sainte Isabel’s inhabitants were loyal to the notorious pirate. He had heard stories about Lemaitre selling his soul to the Evil One. But for all his religious vocation, Bertrand was an educated man, an admirer of Descartes and the modern sciences. He believed that God revealed himself through the laws of nature, as much as through the Bible and other works produced by divine inspiration.
“My good sir,” he began cautiously, “I know what people say. But surely quelling this monstrous outlaw of the seas is a task for our ever-victorious navy? And to talk of demons and witchery—surely you, a man of noble stock, cannot subscribe to the beliefs of the uneducated?”
The governor got up and strode ponderously to the window. It had shutters but was devoid of glass, a too-precious commodity to be allocated to tiny Sainte Isabel. Sounds from the town became more apparent in the silence. Bertrand heard the shouts of children, the repetitive cries of street vendors, and the scream of gulls circling over the quay where the fish were landed and gutted. And he heard something else, a woman singing a song in a clear, slightly plaintive voice.
“Can you make out the words, Father?” the governor said, without turning his head. “Listen carefully.”
Frowning, Bertrand tilted his head. He was nearly fifty, a ripe old age for this part of the world, and his ears were not good. But he could just discern the lyrics of the simple song.
‘The Devil Ship is coming
When the moon is full
The Devil Ship is coming
When the moon is high
Treasure in abundance
When the moon is full
We’ll see the blood of our enemies
When the moon is high’
“So, these benighted slaves and peasants make up songs about Lemaitre, or his ship in this case,” the priest said. He was becoming irritated. Dupont had still not spelled out why he had been summoned to this miserable island. “It is the way of the common people, to make a kind of hero out of every famous criminal. Look at the heretic English and their absurd nursery tales of Robin Hood and his Merry Men!”
“Robin Hood?” The governor turned to stare at the priest. “Not a felicitous comparison. This ‘outlaw’, as you put it, captured one of my lieutenants a few weeks ago. Lemaitre cut off the poor bastard’s wedding tackle, let him bleed to death, then somehow contrived to leave the man’s naked body on my doorstep. He is a devil, or as near as a man born of woman can be.”
Bertrand shuddered at the thought. The room suddenly seemed smaller and stuffier than before. The governor’s face, only partly visible in the light piercing the slatted shutter, might have been a waxwork. The man was devoid of expression, Bertrand realized, because he was at the end of his tether. Dupont was a man struggling to regain control of the situation, and clearly felt he was close to failure.
“Why did you speak of exorcism?” the priest demanded. “If—sorry, I mean when you capture the man, surely hanging him would be the obvious thing to do? What use would I be to you?”
Dupont snorted, went back to his chair, and slumped down again.
“Capture him? No. We will never capture him. But we may yet defeat him. Listen!”
Bertrand listened. After a few seconds, he had to suppress the urge to laugh. Then, as the governor outlined his plans in more detail, he became convinced that the man was insane.
But, since Dupont was the king’s representative, his fit of lunacy had to be humored.
***
Sara raised a hand, deciding to accept that she was essentially back in history class and needed to act accordingly. Theresa Mountjoy paused in her narrative, raised a perfect black eyebrow.
“Yes? You find Governor Dupont’s bold idea preposterous?”
“Well, yeah, kind of,” Sara said. “Bringing in an exorcist, and one who isn’t even keen to do the job. I mean, how could poor old Father Bertrand do anything if Lemaitre was sailing around freely, defying all those nations? You can’t exorcise a guy at long range, surely? And there was no way the priest could get on the pirate ship, was there?”
The librarian shook her head.
“You have seen too many horror films,” she said. “An exorcism can be performed on an inanimate object, such as a house or a car. Or indeed a ship. The governor was aware of this, and of course, so was Bertrand.”
Sara raised her hand again.
“But the priest couldn’t have gotten close to the—what was it called?—the Vengeur without being shot at.”
Again, Theresa shook her head.
“That was not the governor’s plan,” she replied. “Far from it. Dupont, while not the most brilliant politician, had a clever streak. And he eventually persuaded Bertrand to go along with his idea. A very simple one, but quite audacious. Remember, I told you that Lemaitre, like all pirates, needed his base of operations. The governor had nowhere near enough troops to stop Lemaitre provisioning his ship and landing his plunder somewhere on Sainte Isabel. So, he decided to exploit the very thing that made the pirate seemingly invincible…”
***
“When the bishop hears of this, I will be sent to the worst parish in the West Indies,” sighed Bertrand, donning his soutane. “I had hoped to return to France and live out my life in relative comfort, with my books and my sister’s family. They have a little farm near Nantes. A lovely part of the kingdom. Do you know it, excellency?”
The governor did not seem to be listening to the priest’s complaints, but suddenly stopped his pacing and took the old man by the arm.
“Father,” he said, “if this works, I will commend you to his m
ajesty the king. This is, I promise, on my family’s honor. No bishop will dare punish you if you are mentioned favorably at court, you know that. Now, are you ready?”
Bertrand looked at the bell, book, and candle set out on the small folding table. It seemed incongruous to have the tools of exorcism on the deck of a ship. But the small vessel was vital to Dupont’s plan. They must circumnavigate Sainte Isabel. The priest reluctantly declared himself ready. Dupont snapped out an order to the captain of the patrol ship, and soon, the sailors were weighing anchor.
The vessel had been waiting at the mouth of the bay, with the dim lights of Port Louis visible from the stern. A gentle breeze from the land carried the ship out to sea, and then she changed course and began to follow the coastline, roughly thirty leagues out. A great gibbous moon was rising. It reminded the priest of a bronze shield from some ancient legend—perhaps the fabled shield of Achilles, much dented by the blows of enemies. Dupont had explained that, thanks to the moonlight, there was little chance of Lemaitre taking them by surprise. Bertrand was not too sure about that, but he felt mildly reassured by the fact that being able to see was good. He did not want to perish in a shipwreck.
“What are you waiting for, old man?” Dupont asked. “Begin! Begin the ritual!”
Bertrand looked at the governor, then around at the faces of the ship’s officers, marines, and sailors. Eyes stared, gleaming in the lamplight. No matter how absurd he felt this exercise to be, there was no doubt that every man aboard was desperate to believe in the ritual.
And they yearn to believe in me, he thought. In this fat old priest. So, I must share their faith, dispel my doubts. It is my bounden duty.
He lit the candle, placing a glass tube over it to shield it from the sea breeze. Then he opened the prayer book and began to read the ritual of exorcism. At first, Bertrand raised his voice, knowing that the men aboard would like to hear the Latin, even if not one of them understood it. But then he lowered his voice a little, recalling that he had to keep repeating the prayers of banishment for hours to come.
***
“He exorcised the sea?” Sara exclaimed. “That’s just crazy. No, there’s no way they could do that! It must be a story someone made up. When they were drunk. On real bad rum.”
Theresa smiled. This was clearly a part of the story she enjoyed retelling.
“Did you know that a Colombian bishop recently exorcised an entire city from a helicopter to try and stem the evils of the drug trade?” asked the librarian. “And two Russian priests scattered holy water over the city of Tver, in an attempt to curb alcoholism and prostitution. And this is the twenty-first century, not the seventeenth.”
Sara admitted that these stories were news to her.
“Besides,” Theresa went on, “it was not the entire ocean but merely the coastal waters of the island that Father Bertrand exorcised, sprinkling the salty sea with a little holy water. The idea was to create a kind of divine barrier that would stop a vessel that was doing the work of God’s adversary.”
“Okay,” Sara asked. “Did it work?”
“It proved to be almost one hundred percent effective,” the librarian replied. “Almost. As in, not quite. That was the root of the problem back then. And it still is now.”
***
“Devil Ship! Devil Ship!”
The cry went up from the lookout at the top of the small vessel’s mainmast. It was taken up by other men as sailors rushed to the starboard rail. Men pointed out to sea, stared at each other in panic, then looked to the aft at their captain, the Governor, and Bertrand.
“Le Vengeur! Le Vengeur!”
The priest faltered in his recitation of the ritual. He stared out over the moonlit sea and saw a vague black shape beneath an expanse of white canvas. It was the foreshortened hull of a ship, a larger one than their coastal patrol craft. As he watched, a flash of orange flame erupted from the black shape. A dull boom followed a few heartbeats later.
“Don’t stop, priest!” shouted the Governor, his voice betraying barely controlled panic. “Keep invoking le Bon Dieu, bring your faith to bear against evil!”
Bertrand had spent many weary years in the colonies. He had spent them ministering to godless men, blasphemers all, men who often cursed God with their dying breaths. What faith he had left was as threadbare and faded as his priestly robes. But the panic of the men around him, the sight of the Devil Ship, suddenly brought back memories of his youth, when the priesthood had been a true vocation. The young Bertrand, naïve but honest, foolish but true in heart, suddenly possessed the old man.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…”
Bertrand spoke louder, now, not caring that his voice rasped, that his throat pained him. While he held down the pages of his prayer book with his left hand, he sprinkled holy water over the stern rail with his right. He focused only on the words of faith, the words that defied Satan. He saw only the book and the flickering candle and the yellow light shimmering on the bell. There was a splintering crash as the shot from the Vengeur struck the hull of the patrol ship, and a man screamed.
Bertrand did not look up, banished from his mind thoughts of the vicious splinters thrown up by a cannonball’s impact. He had had the misfortune to be on a ship in battle before and dreaded the sharp wooden debris that accounted for so many amputations among sailors. Instead, he chanted, finding his faith renewed as evil incarnate bore down on the frail little ship. He continued because goodness, here as in so many places, was weak and fearful and caught unawares. But it was still goodness, and must always stand against evil.
The smaller guns of the Governor’s ship boomed out their reply, while Lemaitre’s vessel grew closer. Bertrand did not need to look up to know the Devil Ship was gaining on them. The enemy’s salvos grew louder, the crashes of direct hits and the screams of the wounded more frequent. Again and again, the sudden impact of cannon-shot ran through the planks beneath the priest’s feet. Once, he felt a spray of warm droplets and saw blood splatter the pages of his prayer book. He heard someone cursing in pain, and recognized Dupont’s voice.
“We’re nearly there, dammit!”
The captain’s words baffled Bertrand, and he almost stumbled over his prayer. But then he realized what the man had meant. They had almost circled the island, almost covered the coastal waters of Sainte Isabel. If the exorcism had any power, surely it must be manifest now? Bertrand turned the page, a reflex action as by now he knew all the Latin phrases by heart. More guns boomed, more men screamed and blasphemed; the captain barked out frantic orders. The small craft started to turn, tacking against the wind Bertrand thought.
Trying to escape the Devil Ship.
It seemed impossible, and Bertrand suddenly wondered if he was going to die. He had often contemplated death, wondered if he would expire peacefully in his bed as a good Christian should. But until now, he had never thought it might be in a literal battle with the forces of evil. He waited for the cannon-shot that would kill him, or the brutal flying splinter that would pierce his body. Or maybe Lemaitre’s crew would board the patrol boat, and the priest would perish from a pirate musket ball or a cutlass slashing through his throat. He stopped speaking, as the sound of firing was deafening now.
Evil must sometimes triumph, he thought. It reminds us of our original sin, of the mark of Cain that all men bear. There are no guarantees in faith or prayer. I am content to face my Creator.
Bertrand closed his eyes and thought of the Blessed Virgin, as was proper. Then he thought of his mother, a woman so many years dead, her kind eyes and her voice, gentle even in reproof. He had, he realized, become a priest not just because it was a fine vocation for a clever lad, and definitely not because he had been personally called by God. No, he had done so because his mother had taught him that love was supreme over all things. And now, he knew with calm certainty, he would soon be reunited with her.
But death did not come.
“They flee, they turn away!”
>
A ragged cheer broke out around Bertrand. He opened his eyes and found himself not dead, not even scratched. Around him, in the light of one surviving lantern, he saw men busy moving bodies, the bloody and mangled dead set aside and covered with canvas, while the still-living were taken below to endure the ministrations of the surgeon.
“The bastard’s given up!” cried the first mate.
“Go on, run away, you godless turds!” yelled a marine.
More cheering and jeering broke out among the crew, briefly drowning out the moans and cries of the wounded. Bertrand turned to see the captain making an obscene gesture at the enemy vessel. The pirate ship was indeed veering off, its pale sails flapping wildly in the moonlight following a drastic maneuver. The captain clapped the priest on the shoulder, shouted into his face, the man’s breath heavy with onions and garlic.
“You did it, Father! You drove the bugger away with the power of Christ!”
The captain kept swearing in relief and triumph, while Father Bertrand stared out to sea, unspeaking. Soon, the Devil Ship was lost to sight amid the dazzling glimmer of moonlight on the waves.
***
“And it was never seen again?” Sara asked as Theresa paused. “No, that doesn’t make sense. Lemaitre wouldn’t be the big local legend if he’d just sailed off into the sunset. Or moonset, in this case. So, he must have come back for a showdown.”
Theresa smiled, pleased with her bright pupil. She took out a brightly colored biscuit tin, opened it, and offered Sara what she called millionaire’s shortbread. When Sara refused, the old lady asked her if she was on ‘one of these faddy diets you young girls go in for.’ Sara politely turned the conversation back to Lemaitre by asking, out of genuine interest, about what happened to Father Bertrand. But before Theresa could reply, Joe appeared, looking red and sweaty, but also triumphant. He had been running.
“Thought I’d find you here,” he said, panting. Then, to Miss Mountjoy, “Sorry, forgot my manners. Introductions. You must be Miss Mountjoy.”
Devil Ship: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Devil Ship Series Book 1) Page 8
