Kite continued to sleep with his feet planted on the door. Yet nothing untoward happened. If we had an enemy, it was boredom.
Kite’s Past
On the thirteenth day, as we returned to our last evening meal, we found three strangers occupying our usual seats at the inn’s table. One wore the same uniform as Kite, that of the renowned Cent Suisse, although his was in much better shape; the second man wore a black cassock, trimmed with the purple and amaranth fascia characteristic of a Latin-Rite Bishop; the third was a striking young woman, with flawless pale skin, cascading tresses of blond hair, and eyes the colour of a stormy sea. There was something ethereal about her, something not of this world. I can’t be more specific, for it was a quality that defied description, and one I’d never seen before (and wouldn’t see again until I ascended to Heaven). She would have been deemed beautiful by any standard.
She rose, and a smile like a thousand suns broke upon her face. “Kite!”
I was shocked to see a small smile distorting Kite’s features, too.
In a swirl of skirts, she rushed over and wrapped her arms around him, tattered uniform and all. More astonishing still was that he hugged her back. When they broke their embrace, they looked at each other with genuine pleasure.
“Come,” she said, tugging at Kite’s arm. “Join us!”
“Meussin.” The Bishop (whose name, Ambrose later informed me, was Singleton) had risen. “This is not appropriate.”
She laughed aloud. “You should know by now, Peter, nothing is appropriate about me!”
He frowned. “Your father—”
“—knows me and loves me for who I am.”
“And if you loved him the same,” Bishop Singleton said softly, “then you would heed me.”
A cloud passed over her face, and she glanced at the Garde who sat at the table, focused on his meal, feigning deafness.
“You are right, your Excellency,” Kite said, executing a formal bow to the Bishop. “We will return to sup later.”
The Bishop waved away the suggestion. “No need. No need. We are finished. You may have our seats.” He nodded at the Garde, who was not finished his repast, but rose anyway and retrieved his halberd from where it rested against the wall. “Good evening,” Bishop Singleton said, and gathered up his robes with a flourish, walking with exaggerated dignity to the stairs. He held out a crooked arm. “Meussin?”
She looked to Kite, who essayed the slightest of nods, and she let his arm drop. The vestiges of her smile that had lit her face vanished as she took the Bishop’s arm. Without another word, the Bishop led her up the stairs, followed by the Garde who thumped the butt of his weapon on each step.
We took our seats at the table, and I felt the prickle one gets when being watched; I looked up to find Ali’s eyes fixed on me, and realized the whole time she’d been standing next to me, I’d felt that prickle, too. My face coloured.
A few minutes later, the unhappy innkeeper swept away the remains of their meal and laid out a new one for us. We ate in silence, and for a change, Lark kept his opinions on the quality of our repast to himself.
After a silent supper, Kite retreated to our room; Ali, Lark, and I followed in short order. However, after leaving Lark and Ali at their door, I passed my own and continued to the short corridor, clambering up the ladder to the widow’s walk. There I found Ambrose, as I expected I would.
He leaned on the railing, scanning the sea, as he did every night.
“Good evening.”
“Good evening, boy.”
Ambrose—who somehow seemed able to see around the curve of the horizon—said, “There,” and pointed to something invisible to me. “If she doesn’t anchor this night, she should be here by sun-on.”
I peered, but could not make out any vessels.
“You want to ask me about her, don’t ya?”
I did, and admitted it to him. He looked at me kindly, perhaps thinking it was an infatuation that motivated me.
“Ask then, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“She’s been through here before, hasn’t she?”
“Aye,” he said. “Once a year, every year, since she was a little girl.”
“To Rome?”
He nodded.
“To visit her father.”
He nodded again.
“He must be an important man, for her to have such an escort.”
“More important than some, I’d guess.”
I considered for a moment. “Did Kite ever escort her?”
“A long time ago. I didn’t recognize him at first. He’s changed.” Ambrose put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “He is stone, and she was too young to be his lover.”
I pretended relief; and, to be honest, felt some. For although I did not desire Meussin in the way Ambrose believed, I suppose I did love her—in the way that a man loves a goddess. My relief was not for my own chances, but sprang from an unassailable belief that she deserved better than Kite.
“You’ve good tastes, I’ll grant you that. But she’s not for you.”
“How so?” I tried to sound offended, wishing him to continue talking.
“You take me wrong, boy. I didn’t mean anything personal by it. Just that she’s not for anyone.”
“I don’t understand. Do you mean to say she’s guarded like this all the time? Kept away from suitors?”
“From what I hear, aye. She lives on an estate, surrounded by forbidding walls, and equally daunting matrons. I believe she is lonely, for she has seemed so since the first time I saw her as a young girl. I think she had no childhood, at least the kind most children do, and now that she’s come into her womanhood, her father will never let her enjoy society—or the company of men.” He shook his head sorrowfully for a kindred spirit. “I believe she suffers terribly.”
“Then I will pray for her,” I said, and meant it.
“I fear that is all you can do.”
He was likely right, but I vowed to myself that I would do what I could, should the chance ever arise.
I squinted at the horizon. “Three masts, with lateen sails. A xebec.”
“Aye,” Ambrose said. “That’s her.”
We both watched The Charon tack against the wind. I said, “If her father has hidden her away, it is for one of two reasons: he fears for her life, or is shamed by her presence.”
“She’s done nothing wrong!” Ambrose was clearly upset, and I realized that it was he who was infatuated—although his loyalty to his unfaithful wife blinded him to it. “It’s not for her sins, it’s for those of her father!”
“Her name is Meussin,” I said. “In Latin Meus sin means ‘My sin’.” I don’t think he’d ever thought of that before, from the look he gave me. I pressed on. “She has a father who sends for her once a year, with no less an escort than a Bishop and one of the hundred. Bishops and the Cent Suisse do not do any father’s bidding, save one.”
He looked at me, mouth agape, knowing I had worked out the thing he’d thought so secret: that we were sharing an inn with Pope Pius’s daughter.
The Charon
Meussin and her escorts were gone when we arose.
From the porch of the inn Lark spotted them in a dinghy, well on their way to The Charon. The vessel had anchored several hundred metres off shore; she was much larger than any of the smacks, and had twice the draft, so she couldn’t tie up on the pier without danger of running aground. Ali seemed bothered by their early departure, and fidgeted at breakfast. Perhaps she feared the Bishop would bribe the captain to leave us behind. Kite, however, was unperturbed. He ate his biscuit and eggs as he always did, methodically and without relish, as if he was merely storing energy against whatever tasks he set for himself that day.
I, too, was unconcerned.
Hours before sun-on, I had woken to find one of our windows open and Kite gone. I tip-toed across and peered out. The exterior of the inn was weatherboard, as it was for all the houses in the village. However, the inn had several large wind
ows on each level, and these all had casings upon which an agile man might make his way with toes and fingers. I scanned the parts of the village that were visible, but saw nothing. Slipping back into bed, I drifted back into a dense sleep. Some time later, with the first hints of sun-on limning the edges of the boards that blocked the same window, Kite shook me awake.
After our meal, Kite paid Ambrose in full, and bade us pack our paltry possessions. At the door, Ambrose hugged me with affection, and, much to my surprise, I found myself hugging him back.
“Take care, boy,” he said.
“I will.” I shouldered my pack and turned to follow Ali and Lark to the pier—then stopped and looked back to Ambrose. “Would it be presumptuous,” I asked, “if I prayed for you?”
“Not at all,” he said, smiling for the first time. “As long as you put in a word or two for my wife.”
I gladly assented, and hurried after the rest of my company, who’d already started down the pier.
By the time we’d reached the end of the dock, Meussin’s party had boarded, and their luggage was being hauled from the dinghy and stowed. I saw the Bishop standing toe-to-toe on the quarterdeck with a gentleman who looked to be the captain. Whatever they were saying was indecipherable at this distance, but by the way he gesticulated, Bishop Singleton was clearly agitated. The captain, for his part, remained unmoved. The Bishop spun on his heel, his robes billowing out behind him in a dramatic fashion, and went below deck. Moments later, at the captain’s direction, the dinghy pushed away to retrieve us.
When I asked one of the sailors manning the dinghy, he told me the captain’s name was Richardson.
When we boarded The Charon, I watched Kite clasp hands with captain Richardson in the way that men do who’ve reached an accord, and I wondered if their alliance was based on a monetary agreement or a mutual dislike of the Bishop—or both.
Meussin was quartered aft in the Captain’s cabin, Bishop Singleton and the Garde forward in the cabin beneath the forecastle. These were the only two private spaces on the ship. For himself, captain Richardson rigged a small tarp shelter on the quarterdeck near the wheel, and ate and slept there for the duration of the voyage. We were given hammocks on the lower deck amongst the dozen men who crewed the ship; at Kite’s request, the captain contrived to suspend blankets from ropes at the fore of the ship to give us a semblance of privacy. He needn’t have, though. The sailors preferred, save when it rained one night, to sleep on the main deck under the stars and a cooling breeze. I would have joined them, too, had Kite not forbid me.
I found I had an affinity for the sea, and enjoyed the gentle rolling of the ship; predictably, Lark’s weak stomach didn’t, and he spent much of the voyage laid out in his hammock, moaning, or leaning over the rail, retching. Ali, too, initially suffered a touch of sea-sickness, but within two days was climbing the rigging as adeptly as any of the seasoned deckhands.
The Charon was unusually shaped, at least compared to the sketches I’d seen of other ships. She had a long overhanging bowsprit and protruding stern, and was narrower than other ships of her size, making her lighter and more manoeuvrable. She sported six cannons a side, and ballistas fore and aft. Her lateen rig was raked back, allowing for the ship to sail close hauled to the wind. An advantage, Ambrose had told me, in pursuit or escape. Of what? I had asked. Ambrose looked at me as if I was daft, and said, Pirates, of course.
Despite the confines of the ship, I was never bored. Kite continued his sparring sessions on the main deck as best he could, and it was not uncommon for those men off-duty to watch and cheer us on. Indeed, one of the crew members, a pock-faced young man who couldn’t have been eighteen, crowed about his own prowess until Kite let him have a go—and though the young sailor was taller by a head and heavier set with muscles knotted like rope, Ali handed him a humbling defeat without breaking a sweat. The old tars guffawed at the young man as he picked himself up from the deck, and skidded in his own blood. He scowled and cursed them roundly, challenging them to step up.
None did.
Our choral lessons resumed, too, even though I could see them serving no purpose save for Lark—and to maintain Ali’s pretence. There was to be no privacy, so I suggested on the first day that if Ali and Lark wished to sing, it might be best to do so in the early evening while most of the sailors took their meals below. But it wasn’t long before the men brought their food above, and arrayed themselves around us, eating while they listened. I stopped and begged their pardon, but they insisted we continue. And so we did. Even Bishop Singleton wandered out of his cabin, nodding approvingly as Ali and Lark’s twinned voices rose in praise of God. After our practise concluded, and just before sun-off, three or four sailors, as was their habit, played upon instruments carved from wood or whale bone. As if on cue, the Bishop returned to his cabin. Shortly after, those sailors not playing rose and danced wildly, thumping jigs that vibrated through the planks of the deck. It was music and celebration of a wholly different kind from the rarefied spirituality of the Masses, and although I felt a twinge of guilt, I have to admit I found deliberate abandon a welcome tonic.
Our voyage lasted ten days.
In that time I saw Meussin emerge from her cabin only four times, and always in the company of the Garde. She’d stroll about the deck for a few minutes, and lean over the rail lost in thought for as much as half an hour. Then she’d retreat to her cabin. Sometimes she’d open a small window that overlooked the main deck, when Kite held our sparring sessions; at other times I noticed the window open when we sang. Never, though, could I make out her face in that dark rectangle. On the few occasions I saw her, she did not seem distressed by her isolation; on the contrary, she seemed to bear it with the patience of one used to such solitude.
And perhaps she wasn’t as bereft of company as she appeared. For in all of this it hadn’t eluded me that Kite had ample opportunity to speak with her, had he wished. At the inn he could have easily stepped from casing to casing until he was outside her window. And on the ship there was no lack of ropes and spars by which he could have conveyed himself along the hull to where the aft windows of the captain’s cabin opened onto the sea. It would have been difficult for an ordinary man to do so unobserved, but Kite was no ordinary man.
I would have liked to have had some private moments with Kite, too, for I had been doing my own musing since we’d departed the inn, and had questions I wished to ask him. However, my questions were displaced by other concerns that last day at sea. It was early evening, and only Lark was singing that night, Ali having begged off because of a sore throat. All of us assembled heard a cry, then a rush of footsteps on the companionway. The young sailor with the pock-marked face burst onto the deck—with Kite hard on his heels. In three strides Kite caught him and pinned him against the rail, then quickly drew his blade across the arteries in the boy’s neck. As blood jetted in two thick streams, Kite heaved the body over the rail and it pinwheeled into the sea.
Rumours of War
Below deck, next to the galley, was a cage with iron bars and a heavy brass padlock in which the more precious victuals were kept. Here Captain Richardson had Kite confined while he decided what was to be done. I stood outside the bars; within, Kite sat on an overturned rum case, picking at the modest meal I’d brought him. Behind me a grizzled sailor stood, arms akimbo, one hand clutching the hilt of his cutlass. I couldn’t blame that sailor—I, too, would have kept my weapon at the ready after witnessing Kite’s cold-blooded execution.
Looking up from his meal, Kite licked his fingers and said, “I wish to talk to Thomas here in private.”
The sailor shook his head. “Cap’n ordered me to stand watch, and that’s what I’ll do.”
“Did he order you to stand watch this close?”
The sailor spat. “I never liked that boy nohow. Lazy as a sloth, and always causing discord. I’ve no doubt he did as you say.”
What Kite had said was that the young sailor had waylaid Ali with the intention of violating him
and likely killing him in retribution for the humiliation he’d suffered. Had it been anyone other than this boy—on his first voyage, poor at the work they set him, and poorer at finding friends—Kite might well be dead, too. But the majority of the crew shared the grizzled sailor’s view; the boy’s death was neither here nor there for them. If anything, his absence would make their lives easier. No doubt Kite had reasoned all this out, too, before he pulled his knife.
The sailor retreated enough to allow us a quiet exchange.
Kite leaned as close as the bars would allow. “Thomas, I cannot tell how all this will play out. But here’s what I need you to do. First, you must stick to Ali to make sure no more harm befalls him. You can trust Meussin to help there.”
We’d found Ali laid out below deck, unconscious, her skin ashen, blood pooling from a large gash on her forehead. I had stood there stupidly. Uselessly. But Meussin (who’d emerged from her cabin at the commotion) had torn a strip from the hem of her skirt and pressed it to the wound to staunch the bleeding. She held it thus as she had the Garde convey Ali to her cabin.
Kite gestured for me to move closer. “I think they don’t mean to kill me. If, however, things go ill for me, you must—”
“No.”
It’s was the first time I’d ever seen Kite looked startled. “No?” He gave me a look that made me wish I had my own cutlass.
“I have done murder with you, and witnessed you murdering another without cause. I cannot—will not—bear responsibility in more.”
“He near killed Ali.”
“God will be his judge, not you.”
“He intended rape, Thomas.”
My face burned, but I managed to control my voice. “There was no need to kill him.”
Kite lowered his voice even further. “He had her pants down around her ankles when I found them. He knew, Thomas.” I was shocked that Kite said this so matter-of-factly, as if we’d both shared Ali’s secret for some time, even though a moment ago he’d called Ali him. Had she told him? Or had he worked it out on his own? “Do you think I could have persuaded that boy into keeping his tongue?”
The Book of Thomas - Volume One: Heaven Page 13
