Captain Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  So by the time I had reached Bristol, I was hungry, ragged and altogether villainous in appearance, features which would not have drawn attention to me had it not been for my horses. Petrarch was an animal fit for a prince to ride, Athene, though not so striking as Petrarch was still a handsome beast, and ragamuffins like me did not normally own one, let alone two horses like these. I did not have it in me to neglect their grooming and their coats shone like polished wood. I might easily have relieved my financial plight by selling one of them, but this would have cut my survival chances by half and besides I could not sell any horse of mine to a stranger unless I was certain he was fit to own it.

  Anyway, as I said, a losing army is a careless army and I had slipped out of Oxford with no trouble. But the garrison at Bristol were alert, confident, and eager to winkle out spies or spreaders of disaffection in this once Royalist city.

  I had paused to stare up at the fort where only a few months previously Lauder and I had lain together, certain of death. My interest must have been noticed by one of the guard there, for soon afterwards a small party of troopers approached me and asked me my business. I claimed to be a Welsh horse-breeder, ruined by a series of attacks by marauding gangs of Cavaliers (whom I roundly cursed for their cruelty and irreligion) and looking for refuge in a loyal city with my only remaining mounts. I was extremely long-winded, as the Welsh so often are, in my description of the wrongs I had undergone and my cleverness in concealing the two horses, in the hope that I would bore them into accepting my tale. But I proved too clever for they became very sympathetic and, close examination confirming the quality of Petrarch and Athene, they assured me their own captain would give me the best price possible. I did all I could to get rid of them without risking suspicion but in the end I was obliged to accompany them into the city. Their captain was not available, however, and thankfully I took my leave, ostensibly to search out lodgings, promising them most faithfully that I would return that evening. But as I mounted to depart, the sergeant who had been most forward in urging the bargain said, ‘Hold, for here comes Captain Hector now.’

  I went cold at the name. The sergeant left me and went towards a party of officers who were riding down the street towards us. Sure enough, there in their midst I spied the long gangling figure of Hector. I looked around. The narrow street we were in ran right up against the city wall and there was no way out except past the officers. Pulling my hat over my brow, I set Petrarch walking gently towards the group with Athene behind. The sergeant looked round at my approach and pointed me out to Hector, imagining I was coming to display my livestock. As I drew alongside Hector’s eyes flickered from the animals to me, back to the animals and then, puzzlement in his expression, to me once more. I let my jaw sag into an expression of semi-imbecility and kept on going. ‘Stay!’ cried the sergeant, seizing my reins. ‘Here is the Captain.’

  ‘Fantom?’ queried Hector. Then, reaching for his pistol and in a voice loud with certainty, ‘Fantom!’

  I kicked the sergeant in the throat and drew my weapon. Hector swung wildly at me missing my cheek by a few inches while the other soldiers, surprised by the suddenness of the strife, looked on in amaze. I struck at his sword-arm, slicing the soft muscle below the shoulder so that he shrieked and dropped his sword. Petrarch responded to the pressure from my knees and broke into a gallop and as I went by I took another swipe at his throat this time thinking to still his tongue for ever, but his horse, badly trained as I would have expected any mount of his to be, reared in fright and I missed. It was a pity, for now the hunt would be up not for a lunatic Welsh horse-breeder, but for Carlo Fantom in propria persona. As it turned out, it was worse even than that, for on hearing the story, the governor of the city decided that I must be there on some official mission from the King to treat with disaffected persons in the walls with a view to plotting a local rising. Orders were sent out to all posts, urging my immediate capture, which no one would have bothered much over were my crime simply assault on a long streak of piss like Hector.

  I lay low until nightfall, mercifully early at this time of year, and then went in search of my cache. My spirits were low now and I felt no surprise and even little dismay to find it as empty as the rest. Even the mystery had solved itself for my sight of the fort had put me in mind of Jem Croft’s last words.

  ‘I have wronged … forgive me….’

  They made sense now. Jem had, probably by accident, seen me hiding one of my sacks of booty at an early stage in our acquaintance. Thereafter he must have watched me most carefully after each share-out and as soon as I deposited my portion, he had removed it. No wonder the bastard begged forgiveness! I hoped his soul would rot in hell.

  So here I was destitute in a city of enemies. Was this what all my fine schemes, my thriftiness, my plans for respectability and a settled family life, had brought me to?

  But despair is the last sin, and I had hopes of committing many others before I reached that extreme. One chance still remained to me, one debt was yet unpaid. I led my horses down to the waterfront and searched among the ships moored there till I saw the leaky, warping old tub misnamed the Albatross which belonged to Captain Hugh Trengold. It appeared empty save for an old man who came up on deck momentarily to throw a bucket of slops over the side, and I settled to wait in a dark alley opposite. About an hour later I was frightened by a platoon of foot soldiers who marched by, stopping at each ship to talk with the watchman. I was too far away to hear what was said but my fears guessed they were searching for me.

  Trengold did not appear till long past midnight by which time I was half frozen despite huddling between Petrarch and Athene for warmth. He looked drunk and when I reached out of the darkness and seized him by the throat, he was too surprised to struggle.

  ‘Trengold,’ I whispered. ‘We have an agreement.’

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked screwing his eyes up as though he would bore through the dark.

  ‘Carlo Fantom,’ I said. ‘You recall our arrangement?’

  ‘Who? Fantom, is it? Nay, but the time is past, you did not come,’ he said.

  ‘Within a twelvemonth, I said. Had you forgotten that? Why then, you may have forgotten how the rest of the agreement ran. If you fail in your side of it, you are to die!’

  I laid my sword against his drink-flushed cheek where the ice-cold metal must have felt like a bar of fire.

  ‘Yes, yes I recall. You’re right!’ he gasped. ‘Let us fix a time. Come, let us meet in the tavern tomorrow and fix a time.’

  ‘The time is fixed. Tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Tonight! I cannot sail tonight! ’Tis madness to sail at this time of year. Besides I have no crew.’

  ‘Tonight,’ I repeated. ‘I saw a man on deck just now.’

  ‘Him!’ he said scornfully. ‘ ’Tis but an old drunkard who watches the ship for me. He is no sailor.’

  ‘He shall learn,’ I said implacably. ‘And I shall learn. For though we must row the Albatross across the entire Atlantic, still must we sail tonight.’

  He was genuinely terrified at the prospect, but fortunately still more terrified of my sword, though he recovered sufficiently to protest when I told him my horses were coming. ‘I carry no livestock! ’ he said. ‘Hens, perhaps. But nothing larger.’

  ‘They come!’ I insisted. ‘Else you remain here. For ever.’

  Sobbing with fear he agreed. Petrarch had travelled on boats before, and Athene too, so we got them up the narrow gangplank with very little difficulty.

  The old man when I roused him from his slumber turned out to be more valuable than I could have hoped. His name was Dickon Wells, an old sailor driven by age and alcohol to a dependence on the likes of Trengold. He agreed readily to help sail the Albatross, partly out of fear of my sword but most out of delight at the Captain’s discomfiture.

  ‘May three men sail this craft?’ I enquired.

  ‘Aye, sir. If the one at the helm be steady and true, and the others work like the devil. But let us hasten else
we miss the tide without which here we must bide till the morrow.’

  Our first task was to get the old lugger out into the stream and this required two of us to descend to the dinghy and row while the third manned the helm. I didn’t trust Trengold alone on the ship and I have no seamanship, so I took him with me against his protests and left Dickon at the wheel.

  The water which had looked still and polished from the shore now proved to be fast moving and rough, and my muscles cracked as I strained at this unfamiliar task. Slowly the lugger came out of its berth, following the tiny dinghy as sometimes a great stallion will follow the goat it has befriended. Suddenly there was a great deal of activity on the quayside behind us. Voices shouted I know not what, perhaps demanding why the Albatross was moving. Perhaps in the frosty light someone saw the two horses on deck, I cannot say, but now there came an outbreak of musket fire and as Dickon span the helm to turn the ship into the stream and we made haste to come alongside and clamber aboard, I saw another small boat push off from the quay, bright with moonlight glinting off metal.

  ‘We are lost,’ cried Trengold.

  ‘Never say so, Captain,’ said Dickon. ‘Soon there’ll be foul weather enough to hide a flotilla in.’

  I glanced at the bright moon in disbelief. Such nights as this I had shivered through on many a field and never known storms to rise from them. But at sea the laws of nature do not apply, it seems, for as the boatful of soldiers heaved after us and I obeyed Dickon’s instructions for hoisting some scraps of sail, I saw to the north east some traces of cloud come streaming across the sky and felt soon after the wind which drove them. We were now running fast down the broadening channel and behind us the labouring boat disappeared in darkness and spume. With a bit of luck the stupid bastards would all be tipped out and drowned. Soldiers who haven’t got the sense to stay on dry land deserve no less.

  ‘What now?’ I yelled to Dickon. ‘More sail?’

  He shook his head and pointed upwards, at first I thought to indicate the bits of canvas we had laboriously hauled aloft.

  ‘The sky, man,’ he shouted. ‘Any more sail and in half an hour there’d not be a stick left on her.’

  I could not read weather as he could, but the sight of those frosty stars being eaten by great maws of black cloud made me feel a terrible unease. As we raced before the wind towards the open sea, the old lugger pitched and gibbed like an unbroken horse and strained old wood sighed and creaked at every turn. Trengold stood at the wheel, his pale face whipped by locks of his own lank hair.

  ‘Is he all right?’ I demanded, not knowing what I meant.

  ‘Aye, sir. ’Tis terror makes a sailor of a man. He will shit his breeks, certes, but he’s the man to care for this heap of coffin wood.’

  Dickon laughed as he spoke and I saw his old eyes gleam madly. Perhaps he was still drunk, or perhaps this mad adventure came to him as a lightning before death. I knew not, nor cared long to think of it, but went aft to care for my horses.

  How they cried out to see me, each vying with the other to come close. What I feared most was that a sudden movement might cause them to lose footing and crash to the deck, so I urged them to kneel, then lie down between two hatches, so that they were to some extent wedged against the rolling of the ship.

  God bless the beasts, but they obeyed most trustingly and for a while I lay with them, an arm round either’s neck, and prayed for their safety. Dickon joined me shortly and proffered a broken-necked jug of raw spirit which set my innards already disturbed by the violence of our progress in a turmoil.

  ‘God’s piss!’ I said. ‘Is this what sailor’s drink?’

  ‘If they can get it,’ he replied. ‘Otherwise they make do with unrefined stuff.’

  ‘How think you, Dickon?’ I asked. ‘Will we be challenged by ships of the Parliament’s navy?’

  ‘Challenged? Tonight? What! on a night such as this promises, none but fools and rogues sail the seas! More liquor, sir?’

  I sipped again, more cautiously, and this time felt my guts anaesthetized instead of provoked.

  ‘So, we may make it safe to Ireland?’

  ‘Ireland, is it? Well, sir, as to that, who can say? We shall go where this gale will take us, sir, and that may be to the Americas, or to the bed of the Bristol Channel.’

  I did not like the sound of this.

  ‘Can we not run for shelter on the Devon coast?’ I asked.

  ‘Fear not,’ he reassured me genially. ‘Our Captain fears enough for all and where it is safest, he will go.’

  So we lay there and drank, while all around the night grew darker, and the wind wilder, and soon great waves began to run alongside the ship, rising like battlements above us, against which the ship’s mast and rigging lay like puny assault ladders. Strange; I had thought of the ship as I stood on the fort at Bristol; now I thought of the fort as I lay on the ship. Both times I felt helpless and out of my element, but at least in the fort nothing was coming at me worse than men.

  At first the horses screamed and tried to struggle to their feet as the icy water broke over the rails and rushed across the deck. With difficulty I calmed them and as the water came again and again they grew used, or perhaps numbed, through repetition.

  Now the ship began to be hurled about as though it were a shuttle-cock on a court. Sometimes it seemed as though we went spinning through the air high above the water and at others as though the waves that towered over us would meet and blot out the skies for ever. All this time Trengold hung to the wheel and I began to admire the man for his tenacity, even though I knew it was fear for his own skin that inspired him. After a while Dickon went to assist him and I took this for a sign of increase in our peril. I would have gone myself but I did not dare leave Petrarch and Athene, who without my presence would certainly be washed overboard.

  What time had passed, I did not know. Almost I began to wish myself safe in one of Bristol’s gaols, for men and buildings I am skilled to escape from, but this ocean was beyond my cunning. There was naught to do but lie still and trust in the strength of a cowardly villain and a drunken old man, or so I thought, but there are weaker things in nature than the human spirit, and rotten worm-eaten ships are among them. I had thought our movement so erratic that no change would be perceptible but all at once the ship seemed to slew sideways and what I had before thought to be violence now by com parison seemed the smooth motion of a sleigh down a snowy bank. Peering through the mist of spray and spume which now perpetually shrouded us, I saw the wheel spinning free and thought for a moment that my two companions must have been carried away. Then their figures lurched along the deck and half slid, half crawled towards me.

  ‘We are lost!’ cried Trengold.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ I demanded.

  ‘The rudder has been carried away,’ gasped Dickon. ‘We lie broadside on and must soon turn turtle.’

  I realized now how important their efforts must have been to preserve us thus far. Trengold, now that there was no physical task to keep his spirit upright, had collapsed completely and was sobbing out prayers and blasphemies in alternate breaths. Dickon was casting around for his jug but it had long since gone over the side and we were hard put not to follow it. Each wave lifted us up and threatened to tip us all out like chessmen from a box. Only the fact that our sails had long since gone and with them most of the spars and the best part of the mast gave us gravity enough to remain upright and that could not be for long.

  ‘Where are we?’ I cried. ‘Are we near any shore?’

  ‘Only of hell!’ answered Trengold wildly. ‘This is your doing, Fantom!’

  He hurled himself at my throat in desperate haste to do the water’s work for it. I wrestled madly with him while Dickon looked on and roared with laughter. Normally I would have broken him in two with ease but his insane fury seemed to have doubled his strength and he pinned me on my back, plucked a dagger from his side and raised it high. I ceased to struggle. Behind his arm I saw towering high above us a cliff of
water which when it broke must surely crush us all. Perhaps the knife was the more merciful death. Dickon saw it too and yelled loud enough to be heard above the wind and waves. Trengold turned, the knife fell from nerveless fingers and he shrieked. I just had time to realize that what we were rushing towards was no cliff of water, but a real cliff of rock and stone, then we struck.

  The Albatross fell apart like a whorehouse dream. One moment I was aboard a ship, next there was none. Dickon and Trengold went away from me like puffballs on the wind. I saw their white faces, Dickon’s faintly puzzled, Trengold’s wholly terrified, then they were gone. But I had no care for them. I was being sucked fathoms down, as though the devil himself were taking a draught and not giving over till he saw the bottom of the cup. Over and over I turned in pitch darkness, all the while thrashing and thrusting with legs and arms but with no sense of what was up or down. Still, a man does not go easily into the long darkness and while I had any vigour remaining I would fight. But my lungs could take no more, my struggles weakened, I had to breathe. My mouth gaped wide, I took one vile mouthful of water, then it turned to air and I was coughing and retching on the surface.

  But it could not be for long. I was too weak and in any case it would have taken an immortal to swim for long against the mighty surges of those icy waters. Yet was I grateful for the air and though I could not see the sky, the knowledge that the stars still shone serene above that turbulence of cloud was a comfort to me. Almost I was resigned to slip beneath the surface once more and not come up again. Almost … but still was I Carlo Fantom, Soldier of Fortune and Hard-man, that had fought his way across a dozen countries and ravished his way across a dozen more. My being was precious to me no matter how little value it had to anyone else. No, they must drag me down, I would not go willingly.

  Such is the empty rhetoric that buoys up a dying and desperate man. As though words should take shape and substance and float alongside him in the darkness. As though words should move and give back utterance, crying thinly from every side. As though …