Wyvern

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Leave?" Lucinda stepped back a pace.

  Jaki stepped closer. "I came back for you, Lucinda. I want you to be my wife. To come to Switzerland with me, just as we planned."

  "And Pym, your captain — what of him?"

  The glow on Jaki's brow glinted sharply as he lowered his face against the wan candlelight. "Dead. As you said."

  "So now you've room to fit me into your life." She laughed and swung her eyes to her maid. "Am I a toy, Maud, to be put down and then picked up at his leisure?"

  "No, my lady," Maud answered without looking at her.

  Lucinda peered more closely at Jaki. "Are you going to steal me away forcibly?"

  She half hoped he would and was disappointed when he slumped and sat at the edge of the bed.

  "I traveled hard to find you," Jaki said, quietly and urgently. He searched Lucinda's face, seeking his fate, and found a cloud of hope there. She was even lovelier than he remembered, her hair of captured sunlight toppling to the dark moons of her nipples barely hidden by her gown, and he wanted to embrace her again at long last. She was right to hold him off for an explanation. "Lucinda, I would never force you to anything. If you come with me, you will not lose your freedom. I mean only to add to it."

  The caring in his voice lured her closer.

  "Won't you come with me, Lucinda?" Jaki pleaded, daring to place his hand on hers. His heart soared when she did not recoil from his chilled touch. "I have diamonds, enough for us to live well all our days. Come away with me."

  Blurs of hope and need crossed through Lucinda, and she wanted to abandon the anger that had boiled in her since they had parted in the lion garden. Instead she said, "Love is broken by pain. If I stay here, I will find my way back to Europe and a comfortable if premature dotage as a gentleman's wife. And if I go with you now into the night — will you let me walk away again the next time you must make a choice?"

  Jaki bent over and pressed his face against her hand. She smelled of mint grass, and the memory of that scent filled him with desperation. "I want you," he said, lifting his face to look into her questioning gaze. "I've wanted you before I knew you. My past took me from you. And now my past is dead." He removed the amber ring from his thumb and held it up. "If you will come back to me, I will give my life to you. No one will come between us again."

  She took the ring from him and traced it with her fingers. "Where will we go? My father will pursue us."

  "We'll change our names and live in Switzerland."

  "No. Switzerland is not far enough for a man like my father."

  "Does it matter?" Jaki asked. "You have forgiven me."

  "Yes, I forgive you. How could I not? You've come back for me, the one man I have ever loved."

  A surge of joy filled Jaki. He bent to kiss her but held back when he saw the look on Maud's face as she watched them.

  "My lady, your father will kill him if you go," Maud interjected, her heart skipping with her daring.

  "He must find us first. We will go to the New World. Even William Quarles cannot reach us there."

  Maud threw herself to her knees before her mistress. "Luci, please, say you are not serious. You cannot go with this man. He is a pirate. What kind of life will you have with him?"

  "Maud, you have caused me enough grief," Lucinda said. "Would we be here now if you had kept your silence with my father?"

  "How could I have been silent when he was beating you?" The maid's hands clutched at Lucinda's gown. "If you go, he will kill me."

  Lucinda regarded her levelly. "You will come with us, then."

  Maud's jaw trembled. "Go with you — and this pirate? No, I would rather die."

  "Leave her here, Lucinda," Jaki said. "We don't want her troubling us on our journey."

  Lucinda shook her head and looked at Maud with cold appraisal. "My father may very well kill her if we leave her. He is that arrogant and cold-hearted. Besides, I am a lady. I need a maid. And she is a good one. Her family served ours for many generations before we lost our estate." That thought softened her gaze, and she put a hand on Maud's shivering shoulder. "Come with us in good faith, Maud. I need you."

  "Lady, I beg you, don't ask this of me."

  "I promise you, Maud, we will live at least as well as we have aboard ship. Believe me." Her gentle countenance darkened. "You have left me no choice. If I leave you here, you will alert the guard, and they will hunt us down."

  Maud shook her head vigorously. "I will say nothing."

  "I believe you would mean to say nothing," Lucinda said kindly. "But our guard has ways of making you talk. You must come with us. You have no choice, gentle sister. Prepare your things."

  "I will scream," Maud threatened.

  A knife jumped to Jaki's hand as if from nowhere. One moment he had been sitting still, and the next he aimed the blade at her throat. Wawa whimpered.

  "Jaki!" Lucinda put a firm hand on his arm. A wave of alarm iced through her. "Maud, get your things."

  The maid crawled backward from the knife and stood up. When she turned away, Jaki put the blade back in its sheath under his shirt. He winked at Lucinda, but his movement had been so swift and precise that she believed the wink was meant to calm her and not disavow his intent. "When will your boat meet us?" she asked.

  Jaki went to the window. The cat star blinked on the horizon. "Soon," he replied, and vainly searched the dark sea for the prau.

  While Jaki stood at the window knotting bedsheets, Lucinda gathered her favorite gowns and bound them together. She packed her jewels in a camphorwood box: a ruby salamander brooch, pearl hairpins, a necklace of ice-bright emeralds, earrings of topaz, white jade, and starry sapphires, bracelets of fine-chain Italian gold, and radiant gem rings. When Lucinda caught Maud furtively glancing at the door and the bedstand blocking it, she laid a hand on her maid's arm. "Forget that foolishness, Maud. He will kill you to save me. And if he does not, my father will in his rage. Come with us peacefully." A smile warmed her face. "Sister, we have endured much together since we were children. You know my love for you is true. When we have reached our first port, if you are still unhappy, I will send you back to England with riches of your own."

  Maud gripped her arm. "Luci, my sense forebodes ill."

  "If I stay here, Maud," Lucinda said, "I know what will become of me. I will be expediently married to some pompous old man with minor influence in the court, and I will live out my days as mistress of a chilly manor, mothering other little ladies and gentlemen so they may grow up to do the same. Have we come to that, after all the wonders and glories we have seen in this wide world? If I were a man, I daresay it would be different for me. I defy fate. I will have my own life in my own hands — and I will make my own great house."

  Maud cast a glance at Jaki. "He hardly seems the pillar of a great house, my lady."

  "That is why I need you, Maud. He is rough material, suitable for the tough times ahead. Refinement will be our task. A hard task, but our lives will be in our own hands. And we will be free to make something of life rather than be made by it."

  "The ship approaches," Jaki called. The prau bobbed on the swells, and by its slow advance Jaki could see that it would soon fall back. "We must leave at once."

  Lucinda looked out at the night sea, trying to make out the smudged shadow that was the prau. She put her hand on his where he secured the rope of bedsheets to the frame of the window. "Before I go with you, true child, you must promise me a thing." She nodded to the sea drifts under the swirl of stars. "I am at your mercy out there, Jaki. You must swear never to abandon me. When we leave, we go as husband and wife."

  Jaki held the ring in his hand. "As husband and wife," he promised, and his eyes met hers, clouded with emotion. He felt the bond in their blood and wanted to tell her then how he suffered for her mercy, too. His whole life had been a journey to this moment. At the worst, he had doubted the Life would ever reveal this to him. Now the spirit that had climbed with him to the clouds and had led him through the jungle and over
the sea had carried him to the tip of being. He wanted to tell her all this. She knew. Her eyes shone like rain. He put the ring on her finger, and she pressed it back into his palm. "When we are truly wed, I will wear this," she said, and kissed him, the incense straw of his scent enclosing her.

  Jaki tested the knotted bedsheets, then lifted the mattress he had tied to the far end. He secured the bundle of gowns, the box of gems, and the maid's satchel to the twisted sheets crisscrossing the mattress and dropped it out the window. The rope went taut as the mattress flopped into the sea, where it wobbled in the wake of the carrack.

  "Maud, you're going down first," Jaki said, taking her hand. She resisted, but the shadows of his broad-boned face frightened her, and she relented.

  "Use your feet," Jaki advised. "Slide from knot to knot. And don't be afraid. If you fall you'll not be hurt. Go now, quickly. Your mistress will be right above you."

  Maud slid clumsily down the cloth rope and flopped in a muffled splash onto the mattress.

  "Now you, love," Jaki said, and helped Lucinda through the window. She descended more ably, sliding onto the soaked bedding opposite Maud so their balanced weights would keep it afloat — though it had already begun to sink.

  Jaki grabbed a leather bottle filled with drinking water and then sent Wawa out the window ahead of him. He placed the handle of the bottle between his teeth, leaving his hands free to grip the rope. He swirled down after Wawa and cut the tie as he descended into the water.

  Freed of the ship, the mattress spun away. "Kick your legs!" Jaki urged, and the women thrashed with him as the wake of the carrack settled back to the placid glass of the sea.

  "Sorcerer!" Kota's voice tripped out of the dark.

  Maud shrieked.

  "Sorcerer," Kota called again, and the prau lifted over the next swell and drifted toward them.

  Wawa leaped into the boat. Mang and Kota helped the women aboard, and Jaki passed over the water bottle, the camphorwood box, and the maid's satchel. Then he grabbed the gunwale and heaved himself aboard.

  "My gowns!" Lucinda gasped, and grabbed an oar to reach for the floundering mattress.

  Jaki took the oar from her. "Let them go. The seawater has ruined them anyway. We will have new gowns made for you."

  The men rotated the rowing until dawn, when the tide came in and carried them into the marsh isles. Kota sat at the stern using an oar to steer; Mang lay curled up at the prow, stupefied with exhaustion, and Maud, her auburn hair strung in coils across her face, sat hunched over her knees. Rain rising with the light whorled in purple drafts among knobs of islands, and the red shadow of day flowed through mangrove trees and cane grass.

  "This is the most beautiful morning of my life," Lucinda said, breathing the loamy land breeze.

  Jaki cradled her in his arms, feeling the gratitude of a man returned from the dead. He smiled. The Life was big enough not only to hold them but a whole new world. From this morning, he belonged to this woman and that new world, and the past belonged wholly to its ghosts.

  *

  By noon, they had found their way to a marsh village, where Jaki traded trinkets from Lucinda's camphorwood box for a larger skiff with a crude sail. Jaki gave Kota and Mang a diamond each, as he had promised, and released them. But they wanted to be nowhere else. Jaki's shrewd sense of survival and these many diamonds held the pirates fast. Together they spent the rest of that day making the skiff seaworthy and trading with the villagers for food and water.

  They sailed the next day with the green dawn at their backs.

  "Where are you taking us now?" Maud wanted to know.

  "We will sail up the Malacca Strait," Jaki said. "In sight of the coast. In a month — or less, depending on the weather — we will reach Dagon, where we can trade diamonds for a larger boat and a crew. Dagon's a big port."

  "We know Dagon," Maud said with a taint of indignation. "We have been to Dagon. There's an English factor there. But I think you will not get even that far. By now our guard knows we are kidnaped, and he will prevail upon the Dutch to turn back and inform Captain Quarles. The Fateful Sisters will run you down for the pirate you are."

  Jaki lowered his face and leaned against the rail. "The Fateful Sisters is no more."

  Maud turned about sharply, and Lucinda's face darkened.

  "It was destroyed in Serangoon Harbor two days ago," Jaki murmured.

  "I do not believe you," Maud spat.

  Lucinda searched Jaki's face for the truth. He nodded, and she brought her hands to her mouth, afraid to hear the rest. "Father?"

  "He is alive," Jaki said. "Far as I know, no one was killed."

  "How?"

  He described the collision of the big ships in the harbor. "Your father had time to abandon ship," he assured her. "It is unlikely he was harmed."

  "The Bantam must be furious," she said, relieved that the man she loved had not murdered her father.

  "The Bantam cannot blame your father for what happened. News will have reached Dagon by the time we arrive. We will know about your father then."

  "You are a monster," Maud said. "You cannot say you love her when you strike so fiercely at her family."

  "No, Maud," Lucinda responded. "Father was knighted before we left England. He came here as a warrior to extend the influence of the crown. The Bantam employed him to stalk pirates. Jaki faced him on his own terms. Whose loss was worse — my father losing his ship or my husband losing his captain?"

  Maud glared at Lucinda. "You belittle your father who partakes of a king's strength — and you call this pirate your husband? Lady, you have lost sense. You are untuned."

  Her maid's hot disparagement of Jaki inflamed Lucinda. Her hand flashed, and she slapped Maud. "Watch your tongue. Remember who you are."

  "I know who I am," Maud blurted through her tears. "You have forgotten yourself. I was the maid of a lady. And I am yet a maid."

  Lucinda watched Maud curl into a corner in the stern of the skiff and sob into her hair. Her fury drained away, leaving her chilled. "Hold me, Jaki. I am afraid."

  Jaki pressed himself against her. "Don't be frightened. Nothing has changed between us. Maud is upset because she is alone."

  "She does not like you," Lucinda muttered into his shoulder. "She thinks I am foolish for loving you — and she will not call you my husband."

  "I am your husband. No matter what she or anyone else thinks. We must believe in each other and be strong to make our own way in this world."

  "I believe in you," she promised, her fingers bracing against his solidity. "No matter what has happened to my father, I do not blame you. He is a cruel man, who lives by the sword. In my heart, I have put him aside for you."

  Jaki squeezed her tighter. "We are truly one, then."

  "As you believe in me, Jaki, there is one thing we must do." She stroked the wind-tossed hair from his face. "When we reach Dagon, we must have a wedding. I want to be wed before everyone — before Maud, before the English factor. I want my father to know. If he knows, the world will accept that we belong to each other."

  Jaki agreed and rocked Lucinda in his embrace, feeling the anxiety in her tight grip on him. From the corner of his eye he eyed Maud still bent over, quaking with fear. When was the last time he had been afraid?

  He thought back through the bitter trance that had helped him to destroy his enemy's ships in Serangoon, through Pym's execution, through the daredeviltry that had almost killed him when he had tried to save Pym, and he realized he had felt no fear then, though there had been plenty of cause for fear. He thought back through his misadventures with Shirazi and the death-brink they had pranced together, and he found no fear.

  The last time he had been afraid he had cowered in Njurat with Pym, under the strong eye. He had been terrified by the dragon. The mother of life, Jabalwan had called her. He had known the purest of terror under her gaze — but what he had seen then had cured him of fear. What was it? He fetched back and recalled the horrifying vividness of her presence. He heard
again the voice of Jabalwan's ghost: Look at the mother. Her beauty is terrible. She is the Life's beauty — the terrible beauty of all departure.

  He hugged Lucinda tighter, understanding at last. He had seen then the void that sustained everything. The woman he held in his arms was already vanishing. The breath in their nostrils, the warmth in their flesh, was already wisping away with the clouds. Each instant created itself anew and was gone in the next moment. All of life is departure. And that realization held him freely yet firmly, like the deep blue reaches of the sky.

  Sadness undercut this wisdom, because he knew he could never convey it to Lucinda, to anyone. This perception could come only from the mother, from the beauty of mystery. But what sane, sober person would seek such terrible beauty? Fear jealously guarded this knowing.

  The rarity of Jabalwan's legacy became poignantly obvious to him then. Only a sorcerer would purposefully seek out the pain and the fear that led to the mother. And only the mother, the child's first departure, the Life's ceaseless birthing, could liberate the heart from fear.

  Now Jaki knew what he owed his wife. She was afraid and would be until they could find their way home, wherever that was. Her fear belonged to him now. He had married it, and he would need all his sorcerer's wiles and fearlessness to hold on to her as long as he could in the spell of departure that entranced everything alive. The wedding would be the first healing ritual, his first chance to take some of her fear onto himself.

  "In Dagon we will have a wedding all of Asia will hear of," he promised her. And to himself he vowed to remember she was afraid, that Maud was afraid, and Mang and Kota, and the whole world around him was afraid. And though fear was done with him, he had only begun his work with it.

  *

  With rain in its teeth, the wind scampered across Serangoon Harbor, driving Chinese merchants into their lorchas and Malaysian fisherfolk under the frond-leaf awnings of their praus. William Quarles stood defiantly erect at the prow of a sampan heaped high with trash. Rotted pig and dog carcasses found bloated in the harbor after the destruction of the big ships filled the sampan among fecal rags and bloody bandages from the wounded.