Lady Changeling

by Ken Altabef

  He was bent over a barrel, hands tied to the mast in front of him. As the ship rolled, salt spray splashed over the side, driving a hundred stinging needles into the raw furrows the lash had just cut into his back.

  “I should kill you!” the captain raged, then swung the lash again. The captain laughed as the thin leather whip sliced into Ketch’s back.

  Yes, Ketch. Draven Ketch.

  Pirate.

  Chapter 13

  Ketch screamed, both in past and present. Yes, it hurts doesn’t it, thought Amalric. But this is the best way, the only way to get to know someone. Pain doesn’t lie.

  Ketch’s mind swayed dizzily from the pain, the drug, from Amalric’s clumsy intrusion into the sanctity of his memories. He tore uselessly at his bonds. He felt so helpless, so trapped and humiliated. He’d sworn he would never suffer this again. He would rather die. Leave me alone, he raged.

  Amalric held tight, despite the pain which he also suffered in equal measure.

  The memory of the lash fell again, cutting him apart. Ketch screamed. The pain was incredible. His head was pounding as if with heavy drink. Wait. Wait! Was that a girl atop him? Was that music?

  He forced sleepy eyes awake. The girl was riding him hard, her tits thrust in his face, but he was much too drunk to enjoy it. His stomach was churning with bad wine. He upended the cup and took another swig. The air smelled of coffee and fresh lime, of black beans and onions, of stale perfume and burnt tobacco. Hispaniola.

  Somewhere in the room a gang of local musicians were beating out a lively habanera on conga drums, maracas and timbales. He was safe here. The music filled his head, the chatter of other people in the room, the strong drink, the girl pumping up and down. He lay on his bed of silk sheets, still dressed, his pants bunched down at his knees. The naked, sweaty girl smothering him with her soft breasts, her necklaces jangling between them. Up and down, back and forth. The hoe swinging back and forth.

  He drew his leg back and kicked again, striking the boy in the ribs. The boy lay huddled on the deck, curled into a tight ball, though it did him no good. Ketch’s boot found his soft spot again and again. That’ll teach him. That’ll teach him to move sharp, to come when I call and do what I say. He had found this boy among the passengers on an unarmed passenger sloop which The Black Hand had captured en route between Jamaica and Antigua. Ketch had needed a new cabin boy and the nine-year-old had seemed willing to serve. At first. But now…

  Now they hadn’t seen good wind for three days, the men were restless and grumbling, their stores of rum and salt pork running low, and this boy, this damned boy asleep in the capstan when he was needed, leaving his captain calling and calling...

  The sight of the boy cringing helplessly drove Ketch to further fury. He grabbed the boy’s legs and hauled him halfway across the deck. He stomped up and down across the lad’s chest and ordered some of his men to do the same. When they refused, only to stare gawking at him and muttering, he flew into an even deeper rage. He kicked the boy in the guts again, so hard this time he shat himself.

  “You’ll clean that up!” Ketch roared, hauling the boy up by his lapels, “Or I’ll have you eat it! You hear me?”

  The boy could not answer.

  Ketch’s fury burned so hot Amalric felt it torch his own soul. He struggled against the pirate’s inhuman rage. There was so much of it. Now we come to know each other, he thought. No secrets.

  Ketch’s arm outstretched. He held a French dueling pistol at the end of it. The muzzle of the gun hovered only a few inches from the temple of a rival sea captain, a man Ketch had known for years. The two had fought together, had drunk together, had wenched side by side. Ketch’s finger tightened on the trigger. He had to kill this man. The other captain pleaded with him, his words made almost unintelligible by swollen lips. His face was bruised as many colors as the rainbow, and in some places the flesh had been pounded to jelly.

  Ketch screamed. He had to pull the trigger. There wasn’t any choice. Still he recoiled at the notion, fought against it, red rage rising and falling like the hoe until nothing made sense anymore. All was madness. A swirling madness in black and silver. A sea of stars. A cyclone in the sky, boring through time and space like a tunnel. He strained to see what lay at tunnel’s end, what strange and terrible being could belong to that unearthly voice.

  Voice? Amalric suddenly took notice. What voice?

  The message was madness.

  What madness? Tell me.

  Don’t make me look, pleaded Ketch. Oh God, don’t make me look.

  Ketch felt a crushing pain in his head as if his temples were caught in a carpenter’s vise. The pressure was so intense he began to see flashing lights and star bursts, as if he’d held his breath too long under deep sea water. Dull cannonades rang in his ears.

  Amalric ignored the pain. When was this? What did you see? What did you hear?

  Stars throbbed and burst apart, filling his mind with burning light. The sounds intensified into a savage, buzzing voice. ‘Love me!’ It said. ‘Love me!’

  The pirate laughed but it was a joyless, crazed laugh. Apparently he thought very little of love. The stars swirled and grew, flying through their courses in a pattern not even the astronomer could possibly understand, a picture of total chaos delivering a message of pure insanity. The sky burst apart.

  And the memory slipped. Ketch was now lying sprawled on the reef, far from shore, the angry Atlantic snapping at his heels. Where were his men? His ship? He sat up on a slimy rock, his head pounding with a driving thirst that rattled his thoughts, chasing away all rationality. The ship. Gone under. The men all dead. He was alone, the sun blazing relentlessly down from a bleak empty sky.

  Yes, thought Amalric, tell me about the sky. The stars…

  But there were no stars. There was nothing but thirst. Ketch stumbled along the beach, crazed with thirst, baking in the sun. He drove himself forward, step after step, back and forth across the beach. Back and forth. His attention, what little there remained of it, was fixed on the sea line, searching desperately for any sign of the ship that had abandoned him on this desolate shore and left him for dead.

  No, thought Amalric. This happened years ago. And I’m not the least bit interested in this. Show me the reef again. The reef. What was the voice saying? The voice in the sky?

  Ketch seemed lost in an endless stretch of sand and sun. How long had he been stranded on that damned island? It was impossible to tell. There was only thirst and sand and sun.

  Amalric struggled to regain control. It seemed this man had been driven mad not only once but several times in his life. It was a remarkable thing.

  To Amalric’s experience, the mind of a ship’s captain was usually arranged in an extremely orderly way, much like the state of rigging on their ships. The entire concept of sea travel, of charting one’s way across an ocean waste, necessitated a precise command of detail. The sails must all be kept in proper order, slack relentlessly tightened, leaks caulked and stoppered, frayed edges mended, useless baggage tossed over the side. Survival relied upon a precise knowledge of wind and sail and the positions of the stars. That last was paramount, or find oneself forever lost on a watery wasteland. But this pirate’s mind was filled only with bloodthirsty ideas and savage fury. Amalric was incapable of steering this reckless ship without wandering into blind alleys full of animal urges and dark places he did not wish to go.

  Draven Ketch’s soul was consumed with thirst. A thirst for fresh water. A thirst for treasure. He screamed again.

  The stars, insisted Amalric, I want to hear about the stars.

  Leave me alone, Devil, Ketch cried. Leave me alone!

  Not yet, thought Amalric. We aren’t finished yet. He would like nothing better than to quit now, but he must continue to dig deeper into Ketch’s mind to find the buried treasure he sought.

  He exercised his last bit of control over the pirate’s mind, piloting the ship to leeward, bringing forth the comforting image of the hoe swinging back
and forth. Back and forth. But he could not maintain. The hoe rapidly dissolved into the lash once again. The lash falling, rising and falling. This time he was in a different position. He had been strung up between two masts with his arms and legs fully extended. He had stood crucified this way for three full days while waiting for this beating. The thirst was worse than the beating. Maddening thirst. Ketch’s thoughts were a hopeless jumble. The pain, the thirst.

  The stars, Amalric insisted. A voice in the sky. A voice. Saying what?

  Ketch recoiled from the painful memory of the lashing. His mind spun, like a drunk pacing the docks, a lost ship struggling to find port in a storm. He saw the tunnel in the sky again, the stars swirling, the sky world just beyond, empty, no, not empty, full of magnificent desolation, full of madness.

  ‘Call my name!’ It says, ‘Call my name!’

  Name? What possible name can such a thing have?

  Agaranath-Shem. Agaranath-Shem.

  The name brought forth even more chaotic and disturbing images, flashing one after another after another until it was too much even for Amalric to bear. The sky was opening. Razor-edged stars clawing their way through from the other side, filling the sky with a torrent of white-hot destruction. Stars bleeding. raining down a crimson tide. The weight of infinity pressing down. Sheer madness.

  At last he was forced to pull back, to release the bond or be driven mad by the memory.

  Ketch sat shivering, his head lolling helplessly on his chest. Weird animal noises came from his lips, spittle dripping down. He’d gone insane again. This was not unexpected. It had been a rough session, prying all his secrets from him. It was not unusual for such interrogations to end this way.

  Amalric’s mind was still reeling from the experience as well. Madness from the sky, blood and death raining down. Ketch had touched something. He knew something. He was dangerous.

  Dangerous, yes, but easily dealt with. Amalric would tell the guard that the pirate’s identity was confirmed, that he had confessed his crimes. He would provide enough details to assure a conviction at the Court of Justice in Kensington. And any threat that Draven Ketch posed to Theodora’s plans would be choked away at the end of a hangman’s noose.

  He stood up, a little shaky on his feet. He cast one last look at the babbling madman in the chair before he left the room.

  He did not notice that Ketch had snatched a buckle from his shoe.

  Chapter 14

  Fitzroy March slapped a mosquito that had settled on the back of his hand, leaving a bright red, bloody smear. His own blood, he presumed. The little bastards had been bleeding him regularly for two days now as he’d trailed Finnegan Stump’s rickety little cart through town and country.

  The caravan had not gone straight to Trentham as Eric had supposed. Instead they passed from town to town along the Northumberland coast, spending most of their time wheeling lazily through the wild lands between. Stump piloted his rickety cart through thicket after thicket, passing through gaps in the trees barely fit for a wagon at all, sometimes no wider than the cart’s axle. By some conspiracy of nature, the cart passed effortlessly through these wooded thoroughfares while March’s horse sometimes found it difficult to pick its way through. And worse yet, it was now obvious they’d gone round in circles with no purpose other than to waste time.

  March squinted through the woods. It was nearly dark, with only the full moon above, the moon of Midsummer’s Eve. He could see practically nothing through the dense stands of towering oaks and silver birches. He listened intently. Stump’s cart had a squeaky wheel in back, and its strident wail for axle grease had signaled its position to March on more than one occasion. He didn’t hear it now, just more of the strange sounds he’d encountered too often on this journey—an odd chittering which sounded to him like the noises monkeys might make. And damned if he didn’t hear a few exotic bird calls mixed in. It made no sense.

  He worried Stump had escaped him for good this time. It was impossible to follow wagon tracks in these woods. He’d lost the cart twice already and regained the trail only by lucky guesses. He was thankful for the two men who’d accompanied the Lady Grayson on her journey. Reed and Quentin Bambury were both good men. March had trained them in all aspects of providing security for the Grayson family. He knew he could trust them.

  He grumbled softly. Maybe it would be best to settle down for the night and start fresh tomorrow. He couldn’t dare risk a fire and would have to settle for a cold, thorny bed beneath the trees. He didn’t much look forward to another night out in the open. Damn. Another evening of salt cod and fighting off hordes of summer mosquitoes. What the hell was Eric playing at by sending me out as a secret back up plan to the Bamburys?

  His horse snorted, jerking its head up. It must have smelled something. A torrent of snapping branches to his left. A gray mare came running toward them, panicked and riderless. March swung down from his saddle.

  “It’s all right,” he said in a soothing tone. “You know me. You know my voice.”

  The horse approached March slowly. Yes, it did know him. He reached up and took the bridle. He noticed the familiar Grayson markings embroidered on the saddle blanket, a heraldic knot on a red background. This was Quentin Bambury’s mount.

  “Not good,” he said softly. “Not good at all.”

  He tethered the runaway horse beside his own at the sturdy trunk of an old oak, and set out in the direction the horse had come. By now all his senses were on high alert. He crept forward, his gaze low to the ground. The trail of the runaway horse was not difficult to follow even in the dark. It had left plenty of crushed foliage in its wake.

  All the little hairs on the back of March’s neck pricked up. A silhouette up ahead in the murky twilight. Something wrong. He found two men camped out under a tree. One was lying flat on his back, the other sitting up awkwardly. March stepped toward them. Both men were either in a deep sleep or dead.

  March bent close to Reed Bambury, grabbed a fistful of his coat and shook it hard. The man’s eyes opened halfway, his head lolled helplessly. At least he was warm and still breathing. Not dead.

  “Wake up, you useless git!” said March. He slapped Reed on both sides of his face and not in a gentle way. But there was no response. The man would not wake up.

  March leaned close to smell his breath but found he hadn’t been drinking. But there was a peculiar sour odor to his mouth. Poison?

  He tried to rouse Quentin, who was balanced with his back against the tree, but only succeeded in knocking him over.

  “Damn it all to Hell,” he muttered. He couldn’t just leave the men like this. The thing to do was to pile them onto the horses and haul them back to Grayson Hall. And he would. But first he had to see about Lady Grayson. He couldn’t leave her this way either. If these men had been drugged and put out of the way, what terrible thing might have befallen her?

  He decided to leave the Bamburys where they lay and come back for them after he’d seen about Lady Theodora. Perhaps in that time they might’ve slept off the sedative and be fit for the ride back. Or at least fit for an honest rebuke.

  He moved deeper into the woods.

  Without making a sound, March swept the branches of a low-standing bush aside. He saw a small clearing in the wood where a group of six or seven figures danced. Three others stood nearby providing a spirited music on flute, lyre and tambourine. All around the dancers, flashes of light pulsed like Chinese fireworks in splashes of yellow, red and green. It was these faery lights that had drawn him to the clearing.

  The dancers moved strangely in the moonlight. For the most part they were tall people, elegant and slender, and clothed in nothing but the night sky or the green of garden leaves and creeping ivy. Their dance was wild, full of chaotic movements completely out of time with the song. Or perhaps out of step with time itself. In the uncertain moonlight it was hard to tell who was male or female. March kept a good distance away to avoid detection and had to strain to see. The chaotic movements of the dancers
made it seem as if they stuttered from place to place, shifting positions on the instant, with only empty air in between.

  Could these really be faeries? He hadn’t seen a faery since a quarter century ago. It had been 1722, five years after the official end of the Purge. March had been passing through a backwoods tavern in Knightsbridge on a trade mission for his friend Lord Henry. He’d stumbled upon a small travelling carnival. Stumbling was an apt description, since he’d already drunk a bellyful of dark ale. He entered the main tent seeking some feminine company. There were usually an ample supply of dancing girls in such places.

  What he found was a traveling freak show whose star exhibit was a captured faery. The faery was no larger than a child and kept naked in an iron cage decorated with withered strands of garlic and mistletoe, a situation which was clearly painful for the poor creature. Tinny music was provided by a hand-cranked street organ while the carnival master made the faery dance by poking it with a sharp iron rod. As the faery screeched, the watchers were occasionally treated to a flash of faery light in yellow or green. The whole thing disgusted him.

  Henry Grayson had taken a drastically different approach to faeries than his father Griffin. His wife Jocelyn came from a provincial family and her deep-set, country superstitions had worn off on Henry. When Griffin died, Henry ended the Purge and put forth an edict that faeries were no longer to be hunted or molested on Grayson lands. These sentiments were echoed by King George I who proclaimed the fey folk off-limits throughout Britain. The beleaguered monarch had enough trouble keeping the French away from his New England colonies and chasing Hornigold and Sam Bellamy across the Caribbean. As long as the faeries kept themselves hidden in the woods, it was ‘live and let live’ as long as the Crown was concerned.

  The hunting of the fey stopped and the killing stopped. Henry encouraged his townsfolk instead to use folk remedies to keep the faeries away. People hung iron horseshoes above their front doors and strung garlands of march marigolds, primrose and St. John’s Wort along their rafters. They took to wearing their coats inside out when walking along the moors at night and not looking too closely at shifting branches in the woods.