Heroes: A Raconteur House Anthology

by Honor Raconteur

  “If you will both excuse me.” I stretch and look out over the water. “I need to correct our course just a bit.”

  “Correct our course?” Prescott looks up from the scope with astonishment. He looks up towards the sun which is almost directly overhead and out over the sea. “But how can you tell, sir?”

  I simply smile and climb the ladder to the pilothouse. “Ask the captain.”

  On the third day, thanks to Llyr's guidance, our efforts are spectacularly rewarded. Nearly every bucket that comes up is laden with treasure: playing cards, parts of weapons, various small footlockers and keepsake boxes, some encrusted with barnacles, and of course, countless boots. The footlockers and keepsake boxes which are locked, we set aside for the moment, but those which are not, we pry open. In them, we find drawings, photographs, pomades and moustache waxes, shaving brushes, gifts and souvenirs from the islands, some of which were kept dry and undamaged. But to Prescott's disappointment, we find no papers, no intelligence.

  At last, we break out the secondary winch and the larger hoppers to bring up items too large to fit in the buckets, and we are rewarded with planks, some from the ship's deck, and a few from her hull. The hopper catches on larger objects which look to be the ship's guns and which we are in no position to raise, though they support the notion that she is a warship, which makes her salvage valuable whether or not she is the Eurydice. We mark the location in hopes of bringing a larger salvage ship in spring.

  Nothing we bring up bears the name Eurydice, nor any other name, and while Prescott finds this frustrating, I am secretly delighted. Either way, we have acquired salvage rights to this vessel, whatever she is, and whilst we do not know for certain that she is the Eurydice, we are free to continue our search.

  Now that the salvage operation is underway, the crew takes a much greater interest in our work. Even when they are not assisting us with the equipment, they find excuses to indulge their curiosity, coming by as they join and leave their shifts, asking for time on the dredger crew. The captain tells me he hears no more grousing about having a woman aboard, and morale is high.

  They seem surprised by the artifacts, as if they had given no thought to what we might find. Their curiosity borders on the morbid as they pick up the dead sailors' dress gloves and the captain's binoculars. I suppose as sailors, they know that there but for the grace of the gods go they.

  McNeill is particularly interested in the crates full of outdated equipment and weaponry. Sometimes he grunts out a question or two, but he touches nothing “because it is not mine.”

  The only one of the crew who never gets dredger duty and who never comes near our work is Mr. Tillsby, assuredly at the captain's command, for which I am grateful.

  Monday, November 22, 1899

  We work almost round the clock, and by Monday morning, the haul thins to almost nothing. What little we can see with the scope shows us nothing of any significance, so I announce that by afternoon, we should make ready to head for France to go ashore and re-provision. We are no more than a day away and should be able to make port by noon Tuesday if we make haste. The crew is pleased, as they've been waiting to spend their coin.

  Once more before we weigh anchor, Ceridwen uses our last few buckets to read the sea again, and to our relief, my decision is justified, though to my surprise, it looks like our course will take us farther north than I had expected.

  In one of what would have been the last buckets, however, we find a strange chunk that looks like wood, so much so that I would say it is except that it looks and feels like stone. I very nearly throw it back into the sea, but when I pick it up, I feel engraving on one side of it. Someone went to great pains to carve a rather plain letter E in one smooth side. More remarkable is that the block looks to have been cut crudely and with great difficulty from a larger piece. I do not believe the one who carved so precise a letter was the same who hacked the chunk out, and this intrigues me, so I set it aside.

  Mr. Aaron walks past on his way to the boiler room, touching the brim of his flat cap in salute as always, but this time he stops with a surprised look on his face. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he says, “but may I have a look at that rock?”

  I look at Ceridwen, and she nods.

  “By all means, Mr. Aaron.”

  “Just Aaron, sir.” He picks up the rock and studies it. “Do you know what this is, sir? Ma'am?”

  Ceridwen and I look at each other.

  She looks at it more closely. “I would say it's a broken bit of statuary, perhaps an artifact they found somewhere or a decoration on the ship.”

  “Forgive me.” He shakes his head. “I meant to ask if you know the material. This is what we call bogwood. It's still wood, but it's hard like stone from soaking in the peat bogs. I used to see quite a bit of this around Cors Caron. It never rots.” He tosses the stone to me. “Odd to find that out here in the sea. Maybe someone from home brought it along as a good luck charm. Or they found it,” he chuckles. “It must not have been too lucky, though. The ship wrecked, after all. Sir, ma'am,” he says, touching his hat brim again.

  “Wait, Aaron.” I stand. “You say you saw this kind of wood around the bogs. Did you see a lot of it? Enough to, say, make a ship?”

  He shakes his head. “I'm no shipwright, sir.”

  “No, of course not. I merely want to understand how common this wood is.”

  “Oh, quite common. Built houses with it long ago, and they still stand. You could find enough to make a ship, sure, but it's heavy. You'd need to spread it broad and shallow in the water or it would sink. Someone could make a flat-bottomed boat out of that, maybe, but not a frigate.”

  The Eurydice would not have been built of bogwood, but the Aethelfrith, the ship of King Harold Godwinson, might.

  Instead of weighing anchor and going on towards France, we spend the rest of the day drawing up buckets almost faster than we can search them and looking through the scope to try to find more of this bog-wood. We find nothing else. Dejected, I give the captain the signal just before sunset that we should continue towards France. Worse still, the crew is resentful that we must steam through the night to arrive in port by Tuesday afternoon. But they will be in port that much sooner, and they will forgive me in their cups.

  After dinner, Hollins offers us some hot rum to warm our bones and to celebrate our find, but Prescott excuses himself, preferring instead to get some rest. The salvage we have raised already will be enough to pay for the expedition a generous dividend to our investors, ensuring our next voyage. I wish we might have found something for the lieutenant to take back to Sir Nowell from this site. We may yet. After all, we have not yet opened all the footlockers and cases we brought up. Besides, once we have searched the French coast, we will pass this way again.

  I step out onto the deck to take some air. I have grown accustomed to lying at anchor in calm seas at night, so I find the movement of the ship tonight unsettling, as if we are fleeing something. Perhaps the rum is to blame. The moon is no longer quite full, but its light still frosts the waves ahead, which I can see parting before us, and I am grateful for the light and the magnificence of the stars. Otherwise I should feel we were running blind.

  Through the corner of my eye, I see movement on the deck below. Perhaps it is the culprit who is leaving “droppings” for the others to blame on a dog, most likely the cretin, Tillsby. I ease myself closer to the railing to get a better look.

  Below, standing in the moonlight, is a brilliant white Alsatian. He trots to the very edge of the bow and stands looking out over the water and then looks back at me. His eyes gleam red instead of the usual canine green in the lantern light: he is not looking at the ship but at me, eye to eye, meeting my gaze. A chill comes over me. Ceridwen was right. It is the Cŵn Annwn.

  “Ceridwen,” I call to her. I am so dumbstruck that I forget to call her Sarah. “Do you see that?”

  She comes out and looks down at the deck. Her eyes grow wide, and she begins muttering prayers under her
breath.

  “What do we see?” The captain comes to the railing. “My eyes are not what they once were, I'm afraid, especially at night.” He peers out over the deck. “I don't see anything.”

  The dog throws his great head back in a howl. I look at Ceridwen, but she only stares back at me in horror.

  The captain looks at us, bewildered.

  “A great dog stands on the deck. Do you hear it, Captain?”

  He looks at me strangely. “The howling sound? Of course. I hear the wind in the lines. You don't hear it?”

  “I hear nothing,” she whispers.

  “No, nothing at all,” I reply.

  Then, curiously, the dog's coat shimmers and shifts in the darkness, and I cannot tell if the bright white of his coat has snow blinded me or if his coat has turned colour, for now he looks to be the deepest black of shadow, and his eyes glow gold.

  I scour my mind for all the legends about the hounds of Annwn, but I do not remember ever hearing that they shifted colour. What could that mean?

  “First it was the Cŵn Annwn,” Ceridwen whispers, “and now it is the dog of––” She claps her hand over her mouth. She drops to her knees. “By all that is just and right,” she recites in Welsh, “by all that is good and wholesome in the land...”

  The captain still stares over the deck, but he still sees nothing.

  Then the great beast turns away and leaps over the side of the boat, and I listen into the silence for something, anything, to lend reality to what I just witnessed.

  The blare of a great horn startles me just before the boat lurches hard to port, sending the three of us sprawling and scrambling to grab the deck railings. The crew comes running from their cabins to their stations, and I see Prescott likewise come from his cabin, pulling on his jacket. He goes straight to the pumps, and Ceridwen goes to secure the salvage and see to the lifeboats. I, for my part, stay beside the captain, who is shouting commands to the crew as they pass.

  The boat lurches again, but this time I hear metal screaming against metal until the screaming becomes a ripping, tearing sound. The ship lifts, but settles back into the water, leaning ever so slightly to one side.

  “What the devil?” The captain runs for the ladder, I behind him.

  When I come through the doorway of the pilothouse, the captain is already barking. “How the bloody hell do you hit something when you're at bloody anchor in the middle of bloody nowhere?” We all look out into the darkness over the water, but the lanterns at the front of the boat are destroyed, leaving us blind. “Report!”

  The pilot and mate start babbling about a ghost ship rising from hell beneath us. They're both hysterical, and the captain backhands the pilot. “Come to your senses, man!”

  “Something hit us, Captain!” The pilot looks out over the water. “The ghost ship, sir, straight up from hell!”

  The other man, the mate, shrieks, “We're taking on water! Listing to starboard, sir.”

  “Aye,” Hollins growls, “I know we're taking on water, I heard her skin split. Here's hoping the pumps can keep up.” From the pilothouse, it's obvious that the ship is still not level but it is better than it was.

  Prescott comes running up the ladder. “Pumps are at full, Captain, and I've set the men to bailing, as well.”

  “Good man. Whatever you do, keep that sea water out of the boiler. If you have to weld the doors closed, do it.”

  “Aye, sir.” Prescott starts down the ladder just as another jolt rocks through the ship. He loses his footing and flies in mid-air for a moment, but he scrambles hands and feet for the railing and catches it in time to crash into the ladder with his entire body as the boat rights herself again.

  “Prescott!”

  “I'm all right, Briton!” He coughs. “It is no worse than getting kicked by a horse. I'm well.” He picks himself up and runs down the ladder to the boiler.

  “What is out there? What did you see?” Hollins pushes the pilot out of the way and takes his seat, looking from his vantage point over the sea. “And don't tell me your superstitious nonsense.”

  The former pilot takes a deep shivering breath like a doomed man looking at the noose. “Off the bow––”

  “Was it a dog?” I ask. He looks startled by my question, and I feel foolish for asking, but I press the point. “Was it a white dog? Or...a black dog, perhaps?”

  “What?” He blinks at me. “No, no dog, sir. We thought we saw a ship, but not a proper ship. It didn't look right, sir. It was under the water. Then it hit us.”

  The mate nods. His brow is glowing with sweat in spite of the November chill, and his eyes are wide. “Thinkin' it was a reflection, us. Come up right under our bow, it did, and it knocked us one.”

  “So you ran us aground on a shipwreck?” I look at Hollins.

  The pilot shakes his head. “No, no wreck, or if it was, the ship was haunted.” His eyes start to widen, imagining the horror. “I tell you, it was the ghost ship, it’s what we get for disturbing her bones.”

  “No, no, keep your wits or I'll knock them back into you,” the captain says. “It looked like a ship, you say. How do you know it wasn't a wreck on the bottom?” He grips the man's jaw and forces him to look at him. “How do you know?”

  “It was moving, Captain, sir.”

  Hollins and I stare out over the sea, but we see nothing but moonlight on the water.

  “It sank back down like it were surprised we was here, and then come right back up under us again, and again, just now.”

  “I've got her,” he says taking the helm. “Get below and see to the damage. Give me an estimate on how long we have.” The pilot and the mate slide down the ladder. He squints over the sea. “The coast is just a few hours ahead. We can limp that far, can't we, my Margaret?” He turns to me. “I don't have time for courtesies, sir, so I'll be blunt. You're a sailor aboard my ship now, and this is an emergency.”

  “Understood.” I am rapidly getting out of my depth.

  “If she goes down, it falls to you to see the crew safely home.”

  I want to protest that going down with his ship is an unnecessary gesture. This was not his fault. “It would be my honour, Captain, but I cannot believe that will be necessary.”

  Ceridwen appears in the doorway, soaked to her skin and shivering in the November air.

  “Lifeboats?” the captain asks without looking at her.

  She cocks her head, neither a nod nor a shake. “I've launched one with the most valuable of the salvage. The other two in the back are uncovered and ready, stocks of food and water are good. I came up to prepare the others at the front, but they're gone.”

  He nods. “Small crew this run. Two are more than enough.”

  Ceridwen's eyes grow wide, and she gasps.

  We follow her gaze out the window.

  Just ahead of us and slightly to the port side, a shadow like the head of a great whale breaches the water's surface and rises, getting longer and longer before us. Then it pauses and starts to fall towards the surface of the water.

  “If her head comes that far out of the sea,” Hollins mutters, “then her tail...oh, bloody hell!” He turns the rudder and starts ringing the klaxon. “All hands abandon ship! All hands––”

  I dream of dogs pulling at me, dragging me through snow. It is cold, so very cold, that I see the dogs' teeth biting into my flesh, but my blood is frozen and does not run. Then I dream of melting ice and of running through the sparse veins of streams and rivers in the forest north of Hastings with the heat of the sun on my back, running first toward the battle, and then later, away from it, away from my shame. It is hot for October, so very hot, but I must get home, must get to Eira and the children, but I am already too late. So very late. I come slowly to know that I dream of things long lost, but to my surprise I cannot remember falling asleep.

  I am awakened, if that is the word, by a terrible noise and a blast of heat, and for a moment, I am hot. The boat––a lifeboat––rocks violently with the energy of the bl
ast, and I am afraid we will capsize.

  Noise. Heat. An explosion. I open my eyes and look around me to see several people huddled in blankets. The ship. What happened to the ship? I snap back into this world. My memory of what came before is shaded in panic. I remember a great crash, and the captain tapping frantically on the ship's telegraph, calling out, “Abandon ship!” Then I plunged into the freezing channel water.

  “That was the boiler,” murmurs Prescott. He is sitting across from me, also bundled, his bruised face glowing yellow in the light of the burning ship behind me.

  “Aye, that it was,” says another voice I do not recognise. “Godspeed, Merry Margaret. You were a damn fine boat.”

  “Merry Margaret,” drone the others.

  “Ceridwen?” I ask, looking around me. Panic rises in my throat. “Where is Lady Sarah?”

  Prescott nods towards the shivering bundle beside me. “You were right at her side, or we might not have found her at all. You were saying something, but not in English, and you were trying to get to her.”

  “Ah, probably Welsh,” I smile and touch her shoulder through the blanket, relieved that she is safe. “It is my native tongue, and I took quite a crack on the head.”

  He shrugs. “It did not sound like any Welsh I've ever heard.”

  If I was gibbering in Old Welsh or even Saxon, I must have hit my head hard, indeed. “Where is Captain Hollins?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “Stubborn old bastard went down with the ship?”

  “He would have, sir,” Prescott smiles sadly. “But he was dead before he hit the water, God rest him. A piece of glass from the pilothouse window went right through him.”

  This saddens me. He was perhaps too kind and accepting for his own good, but a fine soul. One of only a few I've met in my life. “May he rest in peace.”

  “Indeed, sir, but that makes you acting captain.”

  I sigh. Becoming acting captain is not at all what I want. My impulse is to give command to the lieutenant, but under the circumstances, that would be most irregular. The last thing we need now is for the crew to feel uncertain. “Very well,” I say in what I hope is an authoritative voice. “The other lifeboat?”