by Alan Baxter
Reeve stared a moment more at the parchment, then folded it away inside his jacket. “I think this is the kind of thing that should not be looked upon too long under the mantle of night, eh, Daniel?”
“I would rather not look upon it at all, sir, even under a blazing sun,” I said.
Reeve chuckled softly. “Then perhaps that makes you a wiser man than I.” He ordered another tankard for Jenks and said, “Tell me the story of this.” He patted his coat by way of explanation.
“Of what?” Jenks asked.
“The pattern you just scribed for me.”
“What pattern?”
Reeve frowned, pursed his lips in thought, then, “Tell me the story of your last voyage.”
Jenks stared into his ale for a while. “Was a long time ago and only I survived,” he said eventually, and drained the brew.
“Tell me how.” Reeve waved for fresh tankards and Bella brought them.
Jenks’ eyes appeared to glaze and he spoke more clearly than I would have thought possible. “We sailed for an island Captain Jake knew tell of and he said great treasure was to be found there. None of us really believed him, for no one knew where or how he had come by this sudden knowledge. But a crew follows its captain, does it not? Through storms and most inclement seas we sailed, and many thought we were simply straying into the wide reaches of the open ocean. I honestly feared we would never see land again. But after weeks of horrendous journey an island came into view. Stood tall above rabid gray waves like a broken tooth, it did, and the captain said to break out the rowboats.
“Three boats set off and two were smashed on invisible rocks beneath those hellish waves, those men taken screaming to the depths. But still Jake insisted we go on. Our boat beached and we scrambled onto a rocky shore, thankful to have survived that far. A great rending cracked across the waters from behind and we spun to see the Wistful Lady split from bow to stern. She bucked and rose and men fell wailing into the waves, and damn my soul I swear I saw thick black tendrils writhing through the timbers as she went down. What kind of monster . . . ? We were all that was left and still old Jake insisted we go on.
“We trudged into a maze of high, sharp rocks, with no idea what we might find other than certain death. Jake led us to a cave mouth, like the iris of a damned cat’s eye in the wet, black rock. He forced us to enter and we descended deep into blackness, two damp torches offering a smear of spluttering light to guide us. I brought up the rear and that was all that saved me. The passage opened into a yawning cavern and something glowed an evil, eldritch green on the far wall. A series of circles and lines in a design that made my head hurt and my stomach swim. But I could only catch glimpses of it past the other men as they stood there and stared. And before I got a proper look, they turned upon each other like animals.
“They screamed and howled inhuman, ungodly sounds and ripped and clawed and bit at each other until gore sprayed the walls. I had no thought but self-preservation and I turned and ran, stumbling blind through the black caves until I fell into the pouring rain, the roar of the sea in my ears. I dragged that rowboat back to the waves, leaped in and passed out from sheer terror.
“I have no idea how long I drifted, but luck took me past the rocks, out into the ocean. The weather calmed and, half-dead, starved, and dehydrated, I was found by a passing Spanish merchant vessel. They fed me, watered me, and dropped me in harbor. I will never step off solid land again, I tell you true.”
We were silent for several moments after Jenks finished his yarn. He drank his beer, eyes haunted and wet.
“And that’s what you draw,” Reeve said eventually.
“What’s that?”
“The thing you only saw in part in that hell cavern, that’s the pattern you draw now. The one you drew for me. Yes?”
Jenks frowned, his knuckles whitened on the cup. “What have I drawn for you?” His confusion and madness had superseded his eloquence once more now he was back in the present.
Reeve stroked Jenks’ hair as though the man were a faithful hound. “Drink,” he said in his soft, commanding voice, and moved to another seat.
I sat on the floor beside his chair and Reeve patted my shoulder as he drank deep. “Believe him?” he asked me.
“I believe he thinks it’s true,” I said, for the man’s tale bore no hint of artifice. Madness it might be, but deliberate lie it was not.
Reeve nodded. “I think so, too. You’re astute for a boy barely in his teens, eh? And I think we have gained something very valuable. You will tell no one of this night’s tale, or of this” - he patted his jacket again - “understand? No one.”
I nodded, his requests would always bind me. “That crazed thing he drew is valuable?” I asked.
Reeve drained his mug and said, “It’s not so crazed, Daniel. It’s a map.”
I looked up at him, confused. “A map?”
But my captain was not paying attention to me any more. He looked over to Jenks, eyes dark beneath his heavy brow. He sniffed and rose, walked to the madman, and spoke softly. They quietly left the room together. I tried not to consider the possibilities and shortly Reeve returned, slipping his shining dagger back into the leather sheath that hung from his belt.
He slumped into his seat, smiled at me, and raised his tankard. “To Esme, eh?” He swigged, handed it to me for a gulp.
“Always,” I replied, sadness tugging at my gut.
Though I had never seen him drunk, the liquor always made him melancholy. “Hair that shone like a raven’s wing,” he said in a whisper.
I handed back his ale. “Aye, Captain. And her eyes were like emeralds, eh?”
“You remember her nearly as fondly as I, don’t you, lad?”
“I do.”
*
We sailed on the early tide. A mass of hungover men and women gathered before the poop deck once we had left New Providence harbor for the open ocean. Reeve gave his customary speech.
“We met in the dark and secret dens where the superior British fear to venture,” he began, his soft voice carrying on the warm breeze as each crew member leaned forward to better hear. “Some of you are escaped, or slighted folk, some call you criminals. Well, the law of men be damned. We have no love for those who would rule us, place us under the yoke of order.” He barked laughter, which the crowd dutifully echoed. “So we go where we please, we take what we want, and at every opportunity we make His Majesty’s finest pay!”
His enthusiasm was ever infectious and fists punched the air, voices roared approval.
Reeve dragged Harkness to his side. “This man is your first mate and whatever he says you can believe came directly from my lips. He’ll watch you with a hawk’s eye and any man or woman not pulling their weight will find themselves swimming home. Look upon this fellow and fear him, for to cross him is to die. But impress him with your effort, please him, and you will please me. And we’ll all share in the bounty of our endeavors.”
Harkness nodded, smiling wolfishly at the sailors who returned his gaze with trepidation. Where Reeve was big and bushy and authoritative, Harkness was smooth and bald, all hard muscle and aggression. Between them they were a formidable team. Hard to believe that only the three of us and four other crew had survived the last encounter with the Royal Navy. Hard also to believe we had nevertheless won that battle. Or perhaps not so hard to believe, for Reeve’s vendetta against those responsible for Esme’s death raged and burned inside him like a furnace.
When she was alive, she held her place in his heart, beside his love of gold. He told himself he pillaged and plundered to win and keep her, but she knew better. Knew his greed was his own alone, though loved him still, guided him. Reeve was always captain but it was ever Esme who ruled the ship back then. I wonder what kind of man he might have been if she still lived. When she was gone, the guiding hand that kept the wheel steady was lost. His lust for gold became a lust for blood.
But I approved.
She may have been his lover, but she was like a m
other to me. Furious and fearsome, beautiful and brave, she instilled in me a passion for learning, for reading. She showed me I could be something more if I wanted. Her loss left a hole in me, a wound that will not heal. Anytime I feel it might begin to close, I pick at it until it’s fresh and bleeding once more. I don’t want her memory to ever fade from my mind. I remember her blood on my hands as I held her after a fateful skirmish with the Royal Navy that went so wrong. As she breathed her last, she said, “Love him, but never trust him.” And then she died.
The bastard who brought her low took a long time to die, his body hung on the main-mast until the flesh rotted and the bones had nothing to hold them together. The skull still sits in Reeve’s cabin, grinning from his desk. Many more have fallen since in a campaign of revenge that will probably never end. We have lost more crew than any other of our kind, yet here Reeve was with another signed up already, drawn by the lure of plunder and freedom.
We sailed for two days and little was seen, no quarter to invade. The weather was hot, the skies blazing blue, and the water clear as crystal, and calm. Hackett in the crow’s nest reported no land or ships, and so we sailed on awaiting opportunity. I waited on Reeve in his cabin, fetched him food, poured him liquor, reported any word from Harkness, and, in between times, continued to consume the library he and Esme had built together.
But as time passed, as we sailed further and further from known seas, I realized Reeve paid little attention to his books and less to his crew. He studied that strange thing he had called a map. I did my best not to look upon it, for it still made my insides squirm, but Reeve was obsessed. He muttered about things missing, gaps in the directions, if only that mad fool had seen it all. Of course, had he seen it all, he would not have survived to pass it on, if his tale were to be believed. This is too much, I thought, for a mortal mind to conceive. It saves us from itself. Or it should.
As I straightened Reeve’s bed one day, I heard him mutter again. “Need to fill what the madman missed, find the final heading. Riches greater than gold or British blood, aye.” He scratched at the paper with a charcoal stick, frowned and cursed, rubbed out his lines and tried again. Time after time, he sought to stumble upon those missing parts. And what would happen if he did? I wondered.
“Captain,” I said nervously, “should we not be on deck, watching for the Navy?”
“They will come whether we watch or no.”
I frowned. “Are they not the greatest enemy? We are drifting farther from the waters they patrol. Should we not turn about and hunt them? For Esme,” I added quickly at his dark look.
He stared at me with eyes colder than he had ever laid on me before.
“Men went mad from that design,” I said in a quavering voice.
“Weak men. Be about your work, boy.” He returned his attention to the accursed, all-consuming chart.
That night I woke from my sack in the porch of his quarters to see Reeve stalk past me in the silvery moonlight. Hot and clear, moon and stars bright, he stood on deck and stared up to the firmament. In his hand he held the madman’s map and he consulted it, looked up, turned, consulted it again. He searched for something among the stars that might fill the gaps which eluded him. I closed my eyes, tried not to think about it, and slept before he went back inside. Every night after he repeated the action, gazing to the heavens, seeking answers in infinity.
*
Five days out, to my surprise, Hackett yelled down to us that a frigate flying British colors had crossed the horizon. Reeve burst into action, for the first time roused from his contemplations. He set up his merchant’s flags and raised the ragged, torn sails, the decoys. He had the men head the Scarlet Wind on a drifting course to intercept. A deception to make us appear becalmed, a scam he had employed a dozen times.
The crew lolled about the deck, feigning dehydration and weakness even as they held concealed weapons and boarding ropes. As the British hoved alongside, some officer in a glittering uniform called out, asking if we needed aid. Reeve hid while a dark-haired Spanish woman staggered to the gunwale, her voice weak with desperation. “Please, help us! We have been stuck out here so long, our captain dead, most of our crew sick or dying.”
“Are you diseased?”
“No, sir, simply starved!”
The other vessel moved to pull abreast and as they drew near, Reeve barked the order. The Scarlet Wind heeled over and all our disguised starboard ports fell open and cannon thrust forth, each barking twelve pounds of iron destruction in deafening unison, aimed at the frigate’s waterline. Before the British could react, holes punched into their vessel. It leaned to and began to take on water. Reeve yelled and our crew leaped up and swung across, swords rending even as the Navy men desperately tried to bring muskets and pistols to bear.
Reeve himself led the charge, a shining blade in each hand, one his own and the other Esme’s. He always played both weapons together since her death. “Slay them all and grab everything you can carry before this rat-infested shit-hole of a ship goes down!” he called.
The battle was harsh and fast, bloody and brutal. Several of our men fell, but all the British died. Reeve took his time with their captain as our crew seized everything of value they could find and repaired to the Scarlet Wind as the frigate gave its last heave and sigh and tipped stern first to the deep.
The crew caroused and celebrated with gusto as night fell and Reeve had secured himself another loyal band. They drank the plundered rum, shared the shining coin, and fell into a stupor drifting free by dawn.
Except Reeve, who seemed uninterested in the booty, unfulfilled by the slaughter. He took his map and left the festivities before the night was done and once again studied the skies for clues. His passion for the destruction of the British appeared to wane in the face of this new obsession and all his drive went to it. Each time he studied that thing, another part of him darkened, another moment of his patience wore thin.
He greedily swigged rum as he stared, eyes bloodshot, at the stars.
“You don’t want to stow the gold, sir?” I asked him as dawn smudged the horizon and I headed for my rest.
“The crew will manage,” he slurred.
“But can you trust their count..?” I began.
Reeve tore his gaze from above and waved the madman’s chart in my face. “You think it compares to this? You’ve read the same books as I, you know the stories of riches beyond dreams hidden by the great travelers of old.”
Myths and legends, I thought, and was sure he knew that to be the case. But he clearly thought differently since the mad vagrant’s tale. I wondered if the lunacy of the chart had begun to infect his wits and I despaired. But he was more abrupt with me than he had ever been and I learned to steer clear of his attention as much as I could.
*
For several days more we sailed on, seemingly directionless, certainly away from land and the possibility of further British encounters. Or any other encounter, for that matter. But I knew Reeve followed what he could of the strange guide he had gained. The crew began to grow restless as the days passed and we moved further from the islands.
Eventually Harkness approached him in the quiet of one evening as I polished silverware, unseen, ignored. “The crew are fretting for our course, Captain.”
Reeve’s dark face was shadowed, his expression unclear, but his voice was bored. “Is that so?”
“They wonder why we move farther from our prey, east into open ocean. The loot and the enemy are to be found among the islands, no?”
“They are, most likely, but I seek other things. Best not to question your captain.”
“And I have never questioned you before, though I must admit to sharing their concern. We are heading not only into open water, but into a region known for dangers. A place where ships go and never return.”
“Superstition?” Reeve scoffed. “You take the nonsense fears of these uneducated men and women seriously?”
Harkness stiffened, the implication not lost on him. �
�Was a time you were a superstitious man yourself, Reeve, and rightly so. We should not tempt the gods or fates.”
Reeve flapped a hand. “We tempt no one. Trust in me and those dogs will do likewise. Now begone, I have work to do.”
Harkness’s eyes narrowed, unaccustomed to being spoken to like that by Reeve. They were as much friends as captain and first mate, but Harkness chose to challenge no further. I felt his dismay and shared it. The captain had ever been driven by a powerful vengeance, though now his demeanor was darker. Where he had been fair, he was becoming mean. Where he had been friendly, he became cold.
Harkness left and Reeve, oblivious, returned to the study of his star chart. Before long, he went out into the night to stare up again.
*
The morning after Reeve had a moment of revelation with his map, the crew tried mutiny. The captain had laughed aloud and filled in a part of his guide after spotting something in the heavens, and he sat and stared at his new instructions for the rest of the night. When he gave a fresh heading to Harkness the next day, the first mate’s face clouded and the crew murmured dissention.
Harkness drew himself tall. “I have followed you for many years and always with loyal service, but this course is one I cannot condone. Those waters are ruled by monsters and death.”
“Can’t condone?” Reeve laughed. “You think to take command?”
Harkness said nothing, simply raised his chin, and his silence spoke volumes. In a move so fast it belied his bulk, Reeve pulled free Esme’s sword and cracked its hilt into Harkness’s nose. The man howled and fell, blood pouring from his face. Reeve grabbed a rope and wrapped and rolled Harkness in it before the first mate could put up a fight. Reeve hauled him, trussed up tight, to the rail. With swift strikes he opened several wounds on both of Harkness’s legs and crimson flooded the deck as the crew stared dumbfounded and Harkness wailed. Reeve tipped his first mate screaming over the side, the captain’s face and muscles straining with the effort as he held Harkness up by the rope, just the poor man’s lower half trailing in the waves.
