Wyvern

by A. A. Attanasio

  The garbage skow tacked slowly into the wet wind, crowded with the English crew who had been ordered by the enraged Bantam to ride with the refuse twelve miles out of the harbor to where a British vessel would be allowed to pick them up. Quarles surveyed the scorched harbor. Bile bit the back of his throat as he looked for a last time at the mammoth and charred ribs of his ship among the rubble of the shattered sea wall. The stench of the refuse matched the fetor of hate that had been rising in him since the boy-pirate had crashed Black Light into his ship. Only death could repay this crime. Only death, he swore.

  "Jaki Gefjon," he said to the mazed trees, bitterly recalling the name his daughter's maid had told him. At least he had had the foresight to send Lucinda ahead to Jakarta, sparing her the agony of his debacle. Safely on her way, she would know nothing of this until the Admiralty had been apprised of his tragedy and he had the time to formulate a strategy that would snare the wily pirate. "I will find you, Jaki Gefjon — and I will hang you as I hanged your captain." The words spoken aloud helped keep his humiliation at bay, and he repeated them, the stench of garbage rising about him.

  *

  Under an orchard of stars, the skiff with Jaki and his companions sailed north up the Strait of Malacca and into the Andaman Sea. Jaki steered by the constellations as Pym had taught him, a night-sorcerer with skills that Jabalwan would have admired. By day, the skiff put into jungle coves out of sight of the sea and men-of-war, and the travelers bathed, slept, ate, and sometimes bartered with natives.

  Several times at dusk, setting in or out of their hiding places, their little vessel encountered pirates, fierce, Byzantine-eyed men with brandy-burned stares and necklaces of human ears and noses. Each time, the sight of Wyvern, the reckless bat-shape dripping feathers and snakecoils, had sagged the pirates as though their bones had gone damp, and no one harmed them.

  Most days passed empty of any others, and during long uneventful night journeys, Jaki and Lucinda discussed what they would do when they reached Dagon. They decided to sell some of Jaki's diamonds to buy clothes and to book passage to the New World, Guiana or Curacao — any of the warm Dutch colonies. Of all the powers, the tolerant Dutch offered the most liberal terms, and Lucinda believed that among them, she and Jaki could establish an estate, live well, and rear their children free of the European prejudices that had stultified her childhood.

  Maud kept to herself, angry at Lucinda for forcing her to endure this harsh voyage and fearful that Mang and Kota would molest her. When she contracted jungle fever, she abjured all help and tried to cure herself by fasting and bathing in eucalyptus water. Only after she became too weak to stand did she accept care. Mang and Kota took turns waving fronds to cool her, Lucinda swabbed the stinging sweat from her flesh, and Jaki prepared plasters with seaweed and forest herbs that soothed the blisters scalding her body. Through a river-reed, she sipped a root broth Jaki prepared that tasted like midnight and that quelled her scorching fever within hours. Her resentment and fear yielded, and, with her health renewed, she felt ashamed of the selfish anger that had isolated her. She returned docilely to her duties as Lucinda's maid, laundering her mistress' clothes and helping the others with the campfire and the foraging.

  When her strength fully returned, Maud sought forgiveness from Lucinda. "I had forgotten who I was," she said when she and Lucinda were bathing alone in a jungle pool. "I had hopes when your father sent us off in the carrack that we might return to England — and I would see Aunt Timotha again. And when I was stolen away with you, I forgot my place. Will you forgive me, my lady?"

  "Mousie, you are easily forgiven," Lucinda said. "You are my one true friend. I could not bear to lose you — to fever or to spite."

  Maud touched toes with Lucinda under the water. "I was afraid. But this voyage, for all its hardships, is not as terrible as I had feared."

  "The worst is over," Lucinda reassured her, and blue-winged butterflies traipsed between them as if in confirmation. "Jaki will provide for us until we reach Dagon. And then, if you want, you may return to England, as I promised."

  Maud shook her head. "I was wrong to want to be apart from you, Lucinda. I had truly forgotten my lot. In the fever, I remembered. And now, I will go where your fate leads us. It would be a blessing if it could always be like this." She spread her arms under the jungle wall of torn sunlight and brazen flowers.

  "We've Mister Gefjon to thank for that. Though I know you think him a pirate, he has been most civil and accommodating."

  "He is not the man I always imagined you would marry," Maud admitted. "He is daring and generous. He cared well for me in my fever. And he is handsome, Lucinda. I am sorry I questioned your virtue in choosing him."

  "And I am sorry, too, for having struck you." That apology stilled the last ill feeling in Lucinda's heart, and she settled deeper into the pool, hair fanning in the water serene as a lotus.

  *

  On his forty-seventh birthday, a week after the destruction in Serangoon Harbor of The Fateful Sisters, William Quarles arrived in Jakarta. The English cargo ship that had retrieved him and his crew from the garbage skow had made slow progress: a cramped, stinking vessel, not designed to convey so many men. His sailors had been obliged to sleep on the planks and accept half rations. No one complained, but Quarles could see in their tight faces that they thought ill of him. Rather than anchor safely in the mouth of the strait, he had ordered The Fateful Sisters to moor at the sea wall so that he might have the satisfaction of hanging Pym in full view of the entire settlement. A scaffold on the wharves would have served just as well. His arrogance had lost them their ship and their pride, and they awaited his sentencing before the British factor in Jakarta with ironic avidity, as this judgment boded ill for them as well.

  The morning they put into port, Quarles placed himself aboard the first longboat that rowed into the harbor, so that he would arrive before his crew could disembark and have the satisfaction of witnessing his admission of failure.

  Though heat smothered the port, Quarles dressed with full decorum in satin breeches, a blue captain's baldric draped across his red velvet doublet, and a broad officer's hat plumed with a russet feather. At the dock, no delegation waited for him, despite the ship's signal banners announcing important intelligence. Had some swifter vessel carried the news of his ignominy ahead of him? He knew that sultans used messenger pigeons among themselves. Did all of Asia already know of his loss? A pang sharpened in his stomach at the thought that he had fallen so far from favor he had plummeted beyond ceremony. He mounted the dock ladder with the solemnity of a condemned man.

  The wharves thrived with activity. Lading ships glided languidly over the harbor’s brown water toward the newly arrived vessel. And Javanese stevedores, in headwraps and waistcloths, squatted in the meager shade of bollards on the loading platform. Farther down the cluttered harbor, three Dutch ships stood regal as cathedrals at their moorings, and dockhands bustled in the shade of wide canopies and awnings. Quarles recognized the carrack that had carried his daughter from Serangoon, and he realized that she had probably already heard of his defeat. Would she gloat too? He had struck her, and he had deceived her with her maid to capture her lover. And yet, he had failed to capture the scoundrel, and he had lost his magnificent ship. Certainly, like the crew he had dominated since leaving England, she would abandon him to his misery.

  At the gabled trademaster's station, British naval officers lounged on padded cane sofas, cooling themselves beneath a punkah, a large frond fan rigged to wave as an elderly Malay man gently worked the pulley. Their banter dulled when Quarles entered, and a whisper circled the chamber. He had never had many friends among the other captains. He had neither college affiliations nor family members at court, and he had never made an effort to ingratiate himself with those who had. Now, he ignored them.

  At the desk of the trademaster's secretary, Quarles made arrangements for lodgings and compensation for his shipless crew. In the midst of this, he overheard his daughter's name amon
g the officers' whisperings. He laid a heavy stare on the man who had uttered Lucinda's name. "Sir, do you speak of my daughter?"

  The whole room hushed, and everyone's attention fixed on Quarles. The man he had addressed remained seated and cocked one surprised eyebrow. "Captain — are you unaware of your daughter's fate?"

  Quarles moved his broad body one ponderous step toward the seated man. "How do you mean?"

  "Pirates have taken her, man. Have you not heard?"

  Quarles' heart staggered. He seized the seated man and hauled him upright. "Speak the truth, devil, or by God I will —"

  Shouts rang through the room, and guardsmen grabbed Quarles from behind and pulled him away.

  The secretary rose from his desk and approached the enraged captain. In a confidential whisper he said, "Your daughter and her maid were not aboard the Dutch carrack when it docked. The guard who accompanied them denies any knowledge of their disappearance. The factor interrogated the man himself. You would do well to speak with him."

  With a mighty shrug, Quarles broke free of the men holding him, bowed curtly to the secretary, and barged out of the station. He half believed that some mistake had been made. Even so, he set off at a run toward the cobbled boulevard that led to the embassy houses.

  At the English factor's residence, he barged through the front door without knocking, shoved past the doorman, and shouldered open the double doors of the factor's chambers.

  The factor, a wispy man with vaporous chin whiskers and hooded, drowsy eyes, sat bent over his desk, quill in hand. He looked up without alarm. "Captain Quarles," he said in a flat voice, and laid his quill down. He motioned to a cushioned chair beside his desk. "Please — sit."

  Quarles ignored the chair and stood close to the desk. "What has become of my daughter?"

  "Sit down, William." The factor, despite his size, commanded a resonant voice. When Quarles was seated, the factor said, "No one notified me that The Fateful Sisters was in harbor. I would have met you at dockside with full pomp."

  Quarles closed his eyes and lowered his head. "The Fateful Sisters is not in harbor." He removed a sweat-rumpled parchment from his doublet and laid it on the desk. "My ship was gutted by pirates in Serangoon Harbor. The full account is here."

  The factor sat back and seemed to wrinkle smaller. "The Fateful Sisters — lost?" He pinched the bridge of his nose and was silent for a full minute. "Oh, piteous fortune — the Admiralty will be gravely disappointed to take this loss. The king is already skeptical of the expense of our naval ventures in the East. This may very well decide him against further support for company trade."

  Quarles sat impassively, though his insides seethed, molten. "Lucinda is my only family," he said, quietly.

  The factor sighed and nodded. "Yes — of course. This is a black time for us all." He placed his bony hands on the desk, one atop the other. "I have confined the guard you sent with your daughter in the harbor jail so that you might interrogate him yourself. The man claims he had heard suspicious noises in Lady Lucinda's cabin but was reassured by her and the maid. An hour later, when he looked in on them again, they were gone, the stern casement open and trailing a rope of bedsheets. This was off Pulau-Pulau. We can surmise that your daughter dropped into a small ship. The greater mystery is where the small ship came from to steal her away — and who would be so bold."

  "I know who stole her away," Quarles said with chilled certainty. "She has a lover. A pirate. The very one who gutted my ship."

  The factor's eyebrows rose. "How can that be? You sent your daughter away before the brigand engineered this disaster. Did you not?"

  "Yes, of course," Quarles replied, agitated and helpless-looking. "The pirate could have rowed through the shoals and intercepted her."

  "That's hardly possible, William. No small ship could negotiate that distance so quickly. I have interviewed the Dutch captain and his officers, and they assure me that they were not complicit in this. There is no evidence to disbelieve them. If they had not found a rope attached to the chainwale, obviously thrown from the outside, they would have deemed it impossible for a man to mount their ship unseen."

  "This ... is not an ordinary man." Pain winced in Quarles' voice, and the factor looked at him with curiosity and concern.

  "So extraordinary as to steal your daughter from a Dutch ship under full sail? But where can they go? I will send notice to the company agents throughout Asia. Two Englishwomen cannot appear in a port without being noticed."

  "Should they appear in a port." Quarles' nostrils flared as if smelling something vile. "This pirate is jungle bred. He may take my daughter with him into the wilds."

  The factor shook his head, and a fatherly smile deepened the creases in his gaunt cheeks. "My dear William, if I may be so bold to say, I have met Lucinda, and for all her virtues, she is not one to embrace a life in the jungle. If this heathen is her lover, he will bend to her way. Believe me. I suspect they are this very hour in Serangoon. There you are disgraced, and they believe that you cannot pursue them."

  "Aye." Quarles slumped dejectedly into his chair. "As my report will detail, I have exhausted the Bantam's love for the English. Only foreign powers, openly exultant over my loss, have access to that port now."

  The factor sat back and stroked his sparse whiskers. "You forget that all ports are yet open to the Thieves' Church."

  Quarles's quizzical look hardened to a stare. "You are —"

  "I do believe that your family once shared my faith."

  "Sir," Quarles responded stiffly, "I am loyal only to the Church of England."

  "Of course, of course." The factor smiled almost glumly. "The Church of the Two Thieves owes a great debt to your noble Uncle Samuel for his services in our cause. That debt devolves to you, dear William. I will see that our contacts in Siam and Singapore keep an eye open for your daughter. In the interim, we have this messy business of The Fateful Sisters to conclude. The Admiralty will call for your immediate censure and return to England. I will forward your report as slowly as I can, but news of this magnitude has its own wings. We must put you to sea again before you can be recalled. Naval business is out of the question, but I believe the company can find some work for a captain of your skills and stature."

  Quarles sat silent for some moments, pondering the implications of his complicity with the Thieves' Church. Affiliation with the papists who had inspired his Uncle Samuel's downfall galled him — yet he could bring to mind no other way of retrieving his daughter — if she was alive at all. At last, in a slow, strangulated voice, he said, "Sir, I would be most grateful."

  "Yes." A smile floated like an illusion on the factor's skeletal face. "The Thieves' Church guards her own."

  *

  Dagon looked celestial. Mosques, temples, and pagodas rose among flame trees, delta lakes, scarlet-lacquered wood bridges, and floral boulevards. Canals lined by flat-topped trees mazed the city. Sunlight smashed off the great golden pile of the Shwedagon, a pagoda of pure gold that lorded over the city. Beneath its radiance, a karst-cliff of hanging gardens and looming teak trees brooded like a tapestry. The gold stupa marked the center of the city. Its first neighbors, the pantile-roofed cantonments, housed wealthy merchants and foreign traders. A labyrinth of thatch roof hovels jumbled to the Irrawaddy River, fronted by rice mills and ironwood wharves.

  After weeks of sailing up the wild coast, the travelers eagerly climbed ashore and set off down the wharf lane, leaving Kota and Mang behind with orders to sell the skiff for whatever they could get. Lucinda hailed a palanquin, and they followed the wide, cobbled river road to the gold stupa.

  At the Shwedagon, Jaki displayed a large diamond to the wizened patriarch, who disappeared and returned shortly in the company of a bejeweled prince with silver whiskers that stood like bristles from his mahogany face. He took the diamond and gave the bedraggled travelers the use of one of his residences, a palatial, colonnaded house not far from the gold stupa.

  Servants, brightly garbed in billowy pyj
amas and puggaree headscarfs, ushered them up a wide, scalloped stairway into the sumptuous house. Pink marble panels adorned bracketed pillars, painted calico hangings covered walls with mythical scenes, and the floors gleamed with black polished flagstones. Each room presented a unique arrangement of richly dyed rugs, rosewood furniture, and Chinese porcelain. Jaki marveled at every turn and immediately sent a servant to fetch Kota and Mang from the wharves.

  Lucinda and Maud, greeted by women servants, followed to a bath of colored marble with piscine faucets breathing steam.

  After Jaki had bathed in a similar chamber, a manservant led him to a feast laid out on a table inlaid with jade: fragrant rice, aubergines, yams, dishes of dhal, prawns, curried meats, fruit chutneys, yogurt, curds mixed with sugar and ground almonds, and a glazed pot of black tea. The steward grinned solicitously beside a Dutch chair of carved ebony.

  Jaki sat, tossed a fruit to Wawa, and was reaching to help himself when a man in bucket-top boots, slashed doublet, and feathered cap strode into the room, spurs and sword jangling. When the steward approached, the swordsman brusquely shoved him aside. "Where is Mistress Quarles?" he asked in English.

  Jaki rose. "Who asks?"

  "I am Robert Fletcher, British factor to Burma," he announced. "I am informed that the daughter of Captain William Quarles has newly arrived here. I came at once. And I demand to see her."

  Jaki regarded the man silently a moment, reading the indignation in the thin lips behind his trim mustache and forked beard. "We are in Asia, Mister Fletcher. Your Crown does not back your demands here."

  Fletcher's eyebrows pinched tightly. "Who are you?"

  "He is my husband," Lucinda said, entering the room. She wore a blue sari, her hair gathered to one side and hanging over her shoulder. Maud, her eyes wide with concern, followed.