Red Sails

by Edward M. Erdelac

  Timóteo stopped his praying. “What was that name you said?” There was fire in his voice. “Do not speak it before me, or by my oath to God I will tear your tongue out!”

  A touch of amusement impressed upon Vigoreaux’s wizened face. He shared a look with the redhead behind him.

  “You are a tiger, little padre,” Vigoreaux said. “What of you?” he said, fixing Jan with a watery gaze that made his body tense. It was as if a mad dog were regarding him. “Was it not your voice I heard demanding of my men that you be granted death?”

  “It was death without their merriment I demanded,” Jan said. “Just as I would demand it now, did I think for a moment you’d grant it.”

  “You do not think I would be so magnanimous?”

  “I saw your magnanimousness on deck. I nearly slipped in it.”

  “You see a lot for a piece of driftwood,” said the redhead.

  “I see you dead at my hands,” Jan snarled over his shoulder, “you ginger-headed popinjay.”

  The redhead’s pale face colored, but Vigoreaux put up a gnarled hand.

  “Settle, Mr. Badham, settle,” he said. “He only wants to provoke a quick death for them both.”

  “He’ll get no such thing from me,” Badham promised.

  “But they both have spirit do they not?” said Vigoreaux. “Even this one, a priest and a Spaniard.”

  “Even this one,” Badham agreed, looking at Timóteo briefly before settling his hard eyes on Jan once more.

  “Do you want them, then?” Vigoreaux asked as he straightened from the crystal decanter, now brimming with the abbot’s blood.

  “Aye, sir. They’ll do, though this skinny priest won’t make a mouthful, or last a mile, I’ll wager,” said Badham.

  “I told you this would be a worthwhile dalliance,” Vigoreaux said, pouring the blood from the decanter into one of the pewter goblets before him. “Go and tell the men.”

  “Aye, sir,” Badham said.

  Vigoreaux blenched as the door opened, spilling a patch of sunlight across the floor, then settled into his chair as Badham closed it behind him, leaving the three of them alone.

  Jan stared at the door, perplexed as to why they had been left alone. He saw Vigoreaux prop one booted leg on the table and unceremoniously toe the fat abbot’s corpse to the floor. Padre Ramón lay on his stomach, face turned toward them, palms to the ceiling, little fingers curling, eyes glazing in death.

  “So many priests I’ve known come from academic stock. They know no greater hardship than a cramping hand born of long hours spent pinching a quill. You are slight, padre, but your hands and face are hard. You were a farmer.”

  Timóteo said nothing in answer, but he knelt down at his abbot’s side, closing his eyes gently with his fingertips, and recited the Extreme Unction.

  Vigoreaux rolled his eyes and sighed, picking up the goblet of blood, swirling it like vintage.

  “Not much of a conversationalist, though. And you,” he said to Jan. “You are no certainly no priest. No Spaniard either. What were you doing on that ship?”

  When Jan said nothing for a spell, the old man prompted, “Well?”

  “I don’t fancy conversing with a madman.”

  “You will come to wish you had fallen into the hands of a madman.” The old captain sighed. He put the goblet to his lips, just as Timóteo completed the Last Rites on the abbot and rose from the deck.

  He imbibed in the manner of a thirsty drunkard at a public house, draining the goblet nearly to the dregs and with such an air of casual aplomb, Jan found his fists balling at his sides. When the cup came away, his shriveled lips were painted like a whore’s, and he dabbed the scarlet stains away with a stark white table napkin, the action almost courtly in its manner. The sight of the old murderer sipping the abbot’s blood threw the young monk into frenzy. He lunged across the table and sent the goblet crashing against the far wall with a backhanded swipe of his shaky hand.

  The two glared at each other, Vigoreaux still seated, Timóteo half across the bloodstained table. With an alacrity unbefitting his extreme age, the captain stood and seized the Spaniard by the throat with both hands.

  Timóteo gagged as the old man’s horny fingers clenched. Vigoreaux’s grimace exposed angry, needle-like little teeth, butter-yellow. They reminded Jan of the sharks’.

  Jan moved swiftly to the wall and plucked off one of the swords. Vigoreaux watched him with a look barren of concern. His fingers opened and Timóteo fell with a bang to the table and then to the floor, gulping air.

  In two steps, Jan was within stabbing reach. He thrust the single-edged sword midway up its blade into the captain’s side, a hand span beneath his left arm.

  Jan made to withdraw the sword, but Vigoreaux’s left hand clamped over the hilt and trapped it there with a jarring finality.

  Vigoreaux stared into Jan’s eyes. Jan gripped the sword now in both hands and sought to turn the blade and tear his innards. The sword would not budge. The old man’s rigorous grip did not for a moment slacken.

  This close, he was pale as a powdered fop. His cracked lips glistened red with the abbot’s blood in the stymied glow through the curtains. A shiver went up the middle of Jan’s back.

  He put a foot on the arm of the captain’s chair and threw his whole body into pulling the weapon free. It may well have been the sword in the stone.

  Vigoreaux betrayed no hint of agony over the grievous wound, nor even a smidgeon of effort when he twisted his wrist sharply and snapped the steel like an icicle. The hilt came away and Jan’s effort sent him crashing against the writing desk, upsetting the waggoner and scattering the watermarked sea charts. The red point of the weapon clattered on the floor of the cabin as he regained his balance. Vigoreaux inspected the hole in his clothing with disdain.

  “We were not always as you see us, this ship and I,” Vigoreaux said. He eyed Jan, and beneath the inexplicable heat of that gaze, sweat trickled behind Jan’s ears. Gone was the simple discomfort of conversing with a madman. His unease had been replaced with a wild hammering deep in his breast, by a gibbering in his mind that whispered to him in a voice on the edge of panic. No living man could have his innards parted by steel and then summon the strength to oppose another, or to snap a blade with such apparent ease. No living man. The goblins and night monsters of his boyhood reared briefly just beyond the light of his reason, and it was not without effort that he forced them back.

  “Gather up your priest,” said Vigoreaux, “and be seated. I will tell you the tale if you would care to hear it.”

  “Why?” Jan stammered. How could the old man speak so carelessly with such a wound as Jan had dealt him? He leaned back on the desk, lest the trembling in his knees be evident.

  “Because there’s no greater injustice than a man dying without knowing why or by what means. Human existence entails a lengthy investment of time and effort. It is only proper that it be concluded to some semblance of satisfaction.” Vigoreaux glanced at the table, and reached once more for the decanter of blood. “And you look like you can appreciate a good story. I assure you, you will never hear another like mine.”

  Jan went slowly and carefully to Timóteo and touched him. The priest’s neck bore purpling streaks from Vigoreaux’s fingers, though he had been in their grasp only a moment. He was in a swoon, and his eyes rolled beneath their lids, but he breathed steadily.

  Jan stooped, pulled him away from the abbot’s body, and propped him in the corner. He let the broken sword fall.

  Vigoreaux smiled and gestured for him to sit in a chair across the table.

  “What are you?” Jan asked, not moving.

  “There is no name I know for what I am,” Vigoreaux said. “I drink fresh blood to sustain my life, and I cannot be killed by any means I have yet found.”

  Jan’s father once told him stories about such things. Wąpierz was the name he’d given them. “But were you born this way?”

  “I cannot remember. Perhaps a man’s mind is too small
a space to pack with the memories of too many years. Of my childhood, I have no recollection. My earliest memory is of sailing with Jacques de Sores, L'Ange Exterminateur. We burned Havana, and desecrated the church.” He smiled faintly, rubbing one of the buttons of his vestment between two fingers. “I slit a priest’s throat at the altar. That was a hundred and eighty- seven years ago.”

  “Well, you look every day of it,” Jan admitted, endeavoring to maintain flippancy in spite of his dread. His bold tongue had saved them once. To crumble into weakness now would only bore the old tomcat and lay them out on his grisly supper table.

  “As I said, I was not always thus.” Vigoreaux shrugged, laying the crystal stopper of the decanter aside and sniffing its contents. He tisked and shook his head. “Gone cold already.” He shrugged, and drank deeply.

  Jan watched the monster consume. Monster he was, and one thing was certain, be it rational or no; no blade or ball would put this creature under. He tried to remember the stories of his boyhood. Maybe Vigoreaux would let something slip in his narrative; something to give Jan hope.

  “Eight years ago I was marooned on an uninhabited isle by a mutinous crew of Huguenots,” he said, smacking his bloodied lips like a drunkard settling into a pot of rum and an old joke. “I slept beneath the sands, and I drank the blood of monkeys and gulls and crawling things, for there was no other to be had. I plotted to get another ship and swore I would trust no Christian again. You cannot imagine the thirst that came after I had wrung the blood from the last thing living on that little patch of land. I think that I lamented the tiny corpse of a millipede as I had no man before or since. You called me a madman…well, madman I was then. I do not know how many months or years I roved that island. I could not die, but I could not slake my thirst. Even birds came to shun the isle...and their blood is so very rank and thin. When I was marooned I was a young and virile man…well, young-looking, at any rate. As young as you are now. When I left, I was as you see me now. Perhaps without blood I should eventually have died. I certainly aged,” he said, holding up his crumpled hands, with their parchment skin like ill-fitting gloves.

  “Then I sighted this ship.” Vigoreaux closed his eyes. “They had come to replace their foremast, split by lightning in a squall. Ah, the white sails full on the night wind, the heavy smell of men! They penetrated the brume about my brain. I was able to think clearly enough to wait as they hewed timber and worked through the day. At night I paddled out to the ship across the dark waters on a log. They took me up, good Christians that they were, thinking me a castaway. I killed the first man who offered me his hand. I could not help myself. I tore out his throat with my fingernails and I lapped at his blood like a dog…it was so warm and fresh, it was like coming up for air from cold fathoms. I had been run through and shot a dozen times before I even remembered where I was.

  “But you have seen yourself what use steel is against me, and you may presume what good shot. I killed fifteen of them before they lay down their arms and begged mercy. I could not even see them for the blood running in my eyes. I was bloated as a tick, but my senses were reawakened.

  “They were simple sailors, not fighting men. They soon balked at my ‘terrible aspect.’ I made them an ultimatum. I would spare them if they signed articles with me. Whoever refused, I would cast into the waters.

  “Many of these professed their faith, and could no more follow me than they could walk to the moon. They threw themselves into the brine. I suppose our young Spaniard would call them brave. But many more said ‘aye’ to me. Of these, some saw a chance to get for themselves the power they had seen me wield. I suppose their souls meant little to them when weighed against that. Maybe a few had heavy chains about their consciences from all their sinning and were not ready to die so unprepared. They decided a little more of the same would be the better immediate choice. And for some, well, their oaths were as worthless as rotting skipjack. They thought to sail with me and find a method of doing me in later. Just as you are doing now, I suppose.”

  The old man grinned at Jan slyly.

  Jan said nothing, only listened. How many times had Vigoreaux told his tale? How many men had heard it?

  “These last were the first to die, for all their cunning. It was a trifle to make the ones who coveted my power guard me against the rest. I hardly had to lift a finger. The blood of the liars went to my cups and their empty bodies made a stale supper for the sharks in our wake.

  “The whole crew made a fine provision for the journey up the coast to America.”

  He indicated the thick waggoner overturned on the writing desk, and wrinkled his nose at the mess.

  “In the end of course, I killed them all. I could not hope to avenge myself on the Huguenots who marooned me, but the blood of four score men is much like any other.”

  “And this crew?” Jan said. “They’re…like you?”

  “These?” He shook his head, standing and replacing the crystal stopper. “No, they are what make my tale truly fascinating. In all the world, have you ever met a creature like me?” He waved a hand. “I know you haven’t, for in all the world and in all my years, I have not. Yet there are things on this Earth which astound even me. Piracy makes for disparate shipmates, and nowhere is that more evident than in the complement of The Trivia.”

  He went to the desk and with much rustling, neatly rearranged the scattered sea charts. When they were orderly, he spoke again.

  “Mr. Badham and his Indians, the Wampanoag. I encountered them when we reached Cape Cod. They were a gang of twenty moondoggers—wreckers—who picked among the hulls of ships that now and again broke themselves on the rocks of the cape, looking for timber and whatever else they might scavenge. They came selling wood and nails to our carpenter. Thomas—that is, Mr. Badham, had lived among the Wampanoag in Mashpee. I invited him to share a meal in my cabin.

  “I was taken with him, you know. He claimed to have been a gunner under Edward Teach, and had served with Israel Hands. He told me Blackbeard’s blood spattered his face when the highlander’s sword knocked his smoking head from his shoulders. And well, when a man speaks of hot blood and killing, he has my attention, you must understand.

  “The striking up of a friendship will make even an immortal overlook a man’s faults. Badham’s failing was that though a man in the light of day, he can choose to assume a wolf’s aspect. Under a full moon he does so instinctively. His Indian companions share his condition. Loups garoux, is the name we gave them in my country.”

  Jan’s expression made Vigoreaux raise his eyebrows.

  “Do you doubt my word?”

  Jan thought momentarily, and shrugged. After what he’d already seen, he found he did not.

  Vigoreaux chuckled, genuinely amused.

  “You see, Badham and I both had the same idea in meeting for dinner. The moondoggers set upon the last of the crew outside, and Badham, as much a slave to his nature as I, became a wolf there and then. He tried to kill me, only to find himself in the grip of the lone Tartar, as it were.

  “Mr. Badham is ferociously strong, but I am still stronger. After a few moments of rambunctiousness followed by a necessary awkwardness as I held him under the heel of my boot and barred my cabin door against his gang, he changed back into a man and offered, I believe, the only apology he has ever been compelled to give in his life.

  “I decided to exercise mercy, for I knew this was too odd a chance meeting to simply let by. I will admit that for the first time in oh, I don’t know how many years, I felt reluctant to end the existence of so interesting a creature. I offered him terms, and impressed with my own fortitude as he was, he accepted.

  “He relayed the proposal to his subordinates. He had only to kill two of them before they agreed to sign articles.”

  “What about the rest?” Jan said quietly. “You said there were only twenty at first. Where did you happen to find more like them?”

  “Well, we put to port at Mashpee for a month while Badham and his Indians marched into the
woods and recruited more of their like. Loups garoux, like natural wolves, can use howls and markings to spread a message for miles with a swiftness surpassing the efficiency of the most reliable couriers.

  “At the month’s end we had a full complement of white men and Indians, gathered from the countryside. The New World, I suppose, has become something of a haven for many, shall we say, libertine individuals seeking to escape the persecution of the Old. You must know of this, being a colonial yourself. My loups garoux are all pagans and child killers, convicted cannibals and kidnapers—pirates in short, but for the shortcoming of never having sailed. Sailed! Many of these had never lived under roofs, and were so feral they had to be taught to walk upright. Badham was a good teacher. Despite a few minor if bloody initial challenges to his authority and my own, eventually the crew became as efficient a pack of sea wolves, if you will pardon my usage, as there have ever been.”

  Vigoreaux’s history called to mind a half-remembered tale a Welsh salt had told Jan one late night over a rum pot, of a cursed ship with red sails and a pale, strange-eyed old captain that frequently put to port at Tortuga, buying little in the way of provisions and selling off much ill-gotten bounty. No barnacles clung to her, and no rats traversed her lines.

  Even the notorious folk of Tortuga barred her entry with torch and cannon one year, after several of the town’s whores gave birth to wolf pups. These were cast into the sea. The Welshman had held out the horns the whole time he related the tale.

  “They are able enough, and they are unmatched fighters when their blood is up,” Vigoreaux continued, returning to his seat. “I ask only a captain’s share of gold and the blood of the enemy commander. The meat is their measure. The clean bones we cast into the sea.”

  Jan wiped sweat from his eye with the back of his hand and was glad it did not tremble. It was hot in the cabin, and yet the casements were shuttered. Why did the old tick keep it so dark and close? It was stuffy as a smokehouse.

  “Drink?” Vigoreaux asked. “Not my fare, of course. Rum, if you like.” He gestured to a pot on the table.