Sea of Two Suns

by Nicholas McAuliff

  “Good,” said the Ordained. “More play for us.”

  The door opened and there stood two Brits. They wore scarlet coatees and white pressed breeches; one with a saber at his girdle, the other wearing a tall fur cap.

  “Captain Jameson,” the one with the saber said, extending his hand.

  Ignoring the handshake, the Ordained beckoned to the two men to enter the chamber, which they did.

  “Sit,” he said.

  And instantaneously there came two cooks carrying silver trays, atop of which were beef bones, cheeses, strips of white herring and cherries red as the dusk on a stormy sea.

  “My god,” said Captain Jameson, and his eyes glittered in the red. “And you have cheese here too, I see,” he said, helping himself to a wedge of brittle cheese atop the board. The beef bones smoked between them.

  “In France, we dine with civility,” said the Jesuit. “We do not reach our hands into the platter like a child. Perhaps the English have lost their manner in that regard. As they have lost almost everything else.”

  “Forgive me,” said the captain.

  The other Brit sat furtively, avoiding words and eyes.

  “Already you ask for forgiveness,” scolded the Ordained. “Strange demeanor for an officer of her majesty.”

  Jameson chuckled. “We wear the likeness, having found the form of military muster the best to take around these savage woods and their savage peoples. We are beholden not to company, nor to crown.”

  “I see,” replied the Ordained.

  “My father was an Admiral,” Captain Jameson went on.

  “Admiral of a ruined navy. Strange thing it is. To imagine the victors watching the great Armada burn. If only they saw your failure at Marseille-Fos.”

  “Forgive, but pray tell, were you ever a military man? You do not have the bearing of one. Strange to see a Jesuit missionary with so much influence in the trade of fur.”

  “Indeed,” said the Ordained. “Spreading the word of the lord is its own battle.”

  “I can drink to that,” said Jameson raising a glass.

  None reciprocated the toast and Jameson finished the drink in one motion.

  “Now, let us eat,” said the Ordained.

  Dupan paced over and wrenched a beef bone from the platter, walking back to his post against the door and eating like a dog. The Brits turned and watched the Frenchman, crumbs and red juice falling to his beard.

  “Now,” said the Ordained. “Perhaps we can discuss your last post south of here. Why you are here, I imagine.”

  “Indeed,” said Jameson. “The pelts of these great forests belong not to one nation nor one man. It seems to me that Fur and Pine have taken issue with that.”

  “I take issue with a man having what he ought not have.”

  “Who deemed you a judge of man?”

  “God.”

  “I suppose a Jesuit straggler would think that way.”

  “We have something to offer,” said the Ordained.

  “As do we!” exclaimed Captain Jameson.

  Dupan took a single step forward.

  “You have nothing to offer,” said the Ordained.

  “New France may not be so vast when word of her poverty crosses the ocean,” said Jameson. He looked back at the giant ogre of a Frenchmen. He reached over and helped himself to another wedge of cheese. “Your great Bonaparte would be sad to see the sight,” he went on. “It seems though you have collected the scraps quite well, you are too late, with respect.”

  “I knew Napoleon,” said the Ordained. “We spoke once,” he said.

  And the heavy footsteps of Dupan drowned out the Brit’s soft laughter.

  The man’s pupils dilated as the garrote tightened around his neck, metallic tinsel draining blood down and unto his already red coatee.

  The doomed grasped at the tinsel wire but Dupan only tightened it, seemingly without strain or effort.

  “By god!” screamed the other Brit.

  As he stood the Ordained cocked a pocket pistol and aimed it square at the remaining man.

  “And I say to you as did the Lord,” said the Ordained picking up his fork again, “where were you when the angels sang for joy? No answer, I see.”

  The harpsichord’s melody ceased.

  “Keep playing, keep playing,” the Ordained said.

  The white-faced entertainer resumed his tune, a slow rising gleeful jangle.

  The last gargles of life ceased from Jameson as he convulsed in his chair.

  “You can put your hands down,” said the Ordained.

  The living Englishmen sat motionless as the dead man by his side, and Dupan again took his post against the door.

  “Keep eating, keep eating,” said the Ordained.

  “I am not hungry,” whispered the Brit.

  “When we surround the bay come spring, Old Fort Albany shall be shuttered. We will take operations from there, and you shall receive one tenth of the gross from those profits. Now, should you be unable to afford us forty men per fort, should you be unable to produce the quantity of pelts-per-month which fur and pine requires, you shall receive one twentieth of the gross.”

  “Another bloody tribute! Nobody can produce that many pelts,” said the Brit. “Not anymore.”

  “Then, as I said, you shall receive one twentieth of the gross. You may sign the agreement here,” said he, pushing a yellowed paper toward the man and extending the nib pen.

  “To survive on such a wage. We shall be finished ere we started.”

  “Still we fail to see eye to eye. Keep eating, I said.”

  And again the heavy footsteps of Dupan came, the dogs whined playfully by the far fire, from which they never rose even despite death nearby.

  The Brit turned his head and it was grasped by Dupan’s iron hand and with the other Dupan pushed a wedge of cheese down into the gurgling man’s throat.

  “Yet that can be remedied,” said the Ordained. He covered his mouth and coughed hard then wiped his mouth with a silken napkin. “Cheese, of all things, is very hard to come by in these forests,” he whispered. He coughed again as the Brit continued choking.

  A break in the music came, followed by the slow start of a different tune.

  The Brit moaned hoarsely through mounds of food as Dupan methodically pushed more into the man’s throat.

  The hounds played and two fought fiercely over a whitened bone. “They are loyal,” said the Ordained, looking toward the whining Newfoundlands. “Stupid animals, yet obedient. Stupid, strong and obedient,” he said. “The best kind of loyalty.”

  The man gagged and muffled screams came from his throat.

  “And as a result,” said the Ordained, “They are fed. They warm themselves by the hearth, my hearth, whenever they choose. They can frolic in the snows as they wish. All I ask is their protection, in this case. For they are merely dogs.”

  Dupan pushed the man’s head down and allowed him a breath. He vomited.

  “We’ll have her shuttered by god!” cried the Brit.

  The Ordained slowly shook his head. “God isn’t here,” he said. “I no longer hear his voice. He is testing me, I think,” he said, looking out toward the black pines dancing silently with the nightly gales.

  And Dupan was back against the wall, again as a statue. As though the assault never took place.

  “Alas,” said the Ordained, “I am glad we came to an agreement. As we always do.”

  And the Brit staggered up, knocking the silver dish from the board. He scribbled onto the document with curled edges. And he ran from the chamber, the Ordained stopping Dupan by a mere raise of his hand.

  Atop his horse the Englishman was and whisking through the pines of the night.

  In the chamber Dupan took a more relaxed stance.

  The Ordained finished his meal over several stretched moments. In front of him was a porcelain plate, now upside down on the tiled floor, as well as the dead man, a smashed board of scattered cheese and cubes of fried elk.

&
nbsp; “Have some cheese, Dupan,” said the Ordained.

  Dupan laughed.

  The Ordained stacked his plates and silverware. “What of the Irish?” he asked. He lifted a tiny cup filled half with salt and tossed the contents overtop the dead Jameson.

  “He set sail from New Bedford,” said Dupan.

  “Set sail!” shouted the Ordained. “The man failed. Captain Turner and the pirate and his scoundrels have fifty men between them. Fifty men, looking for the island of silver,” he said. “When there is ample fur to be had here.”

  “Is there ample fur sir?”

  The Ordained looked up perplexed. “I’m sorry?”

  “Forgive. Now three seasons the lines produce less than a fourth-”

  The Ordained put up his hand. “Now is the time for faith, not doubt. Alas, McDaniel I no longer hold any faith in.”

  “Aye,” said Dupan. “My scout said he was enraged after others sailed and set sail anyway from a schooner at New Bedford.”

  “May he be crushed slowly by the ice.”

  “It seems to be, sir. The Eskimo talk of a warm winter. McDaniel had a merchant vessel burned at port before she even set sail.”

  The Ordained grinned. “He’s like me, after all. If he returns, garrot him as you did the Brit there. And get the Limey out of my sight, lest I lose my supper.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  XVII

  A guttural scream came from below deck.

  A flurry of footsteps erupted; down the ladder they went and filed single file.

  The captain slouched with his back against the bulkhead.

  “What is this?” shouted Francisco.

  The captain motioned toward the barrels.

  Francisco opened the lid on one. “No,” Francisco muttered, opening the lid on another. “No, no!”

  “No!” Julius cried.

  Isaac peered into the barrel and saw a dead rat the size of a small crow floating in the freshwater. Around it a murky film coated the surface.

  The captain rose. “Check the others,” he whispered.

  And Francisco and Isaac opened the other barrels, tucked neatly in rows against the bulkhead. “One…two…fucking three!” screamed the Mexican.

  “How?” said Isaac.

  “It doesn’t matter how!” replied the captain.

  “Two good barrels, captain,” said Francisco. “We will be lucky to make a few days. I don’t know, maybe less.”

  “We need to land ashore on one of these godforsaken islands.”

  “The Baffin Island,” said Jerimiah. “Aye. We stowed there a fortnight on our last voyage to find the passage.”

  “Inuit?” said the captain.

  Nukilik shook his head. “Our kin. Our uncle is there. Less than an hour’s trek inland should the ice permit. Should he still live, he will receive us.”

  The sun reflected intensely from the endless icy glaze. All encircling the crew were monumental glaciers dotting land and sea both; sheets of floating pack ice made their way inward with impossible slowness. From the rocky overhangs further inland no greenery of any kind grew, but portly petrels came back and forth from the jutted inlets in the yellowed rock, crying all the way.

  Disjointed voices came from the igloos. They too were encircled as if mimicking the icy island and its retinue of icebergs beyond.

  Isaac saw the clouds reflected in the still sea, above and below, but the ice obscured that vision and made the sea and sky as one.

  “This was a mistake,” said the captain. “They are likely to spear us before speaking to us.”

  “In that case the damned surgeon can sail The Roc back to Britain for all I care,” said Jerimiah. “Probably he is inebriated already instead of keeping watch.”

  “Not all Inuit learned to despise the white man,” said Arnaaluk. “These tribes are too far West of the Bay. And only seldom trade blubber and sealskin when they go inland or southward. For long-rifles and gun powder,” she said, pointing to a tall figure clad in white who wielded a long musket.

  “Trade to whom?” yelled Herb, wheezing and trudging over the ice behind.

  “Perhaps you’d have your wind had you not brought the fucking cannon,” snarled the captain.

  “I got my wind,” replied the hunter, still wheezing while the towering elephant gun shadowed him, hanging over his back like a familiar.

  “To those Frenchmen who no longer have faith in Fur and Pine,” said the Mexican.

  The sun turned a blinding white, shooting light arrows unto the crew. Those same arrows bounced from the layers of freeze underneath them and about the chunks of ancient luminous blue. A fire burned clearly from the center of the central igloo, thicker than the others. Inside women scraped hides hung tightly between iron poles and others beat hides against slabs of ice.

  The structure was adorned with dozens of antlers, some still with their felt peeling off and blowing like bloody flags in the frozen wind.

  The voices became hush as the men came into view. A silhouette of vagabonds: pirates, trappers, whalemen and hunters of yesteryear wearing mismatched furs and chaps; they were a sorry sight compared to the hearty Inuit hunters in their long amber and white furs and boots. The women and children too donned furs and necklaces and bracelets of round beads and shells, purple and pearly white. Some of which glowed with a brilliant tint where the sun glinted.

  “Imiq, Imiq, Imiq,” said Nukilik. He smiled and put his arms to the sky, shuffling toward the main igloo.

  From that same igloo three men rushed. They spoke hastily to one another, women, children and old men alike stood frozen and looked on.

  A man of small stature emerged from the igloo. His skin was taut with age and leathered from decades against the whipping winds of the frozen north. Around his shoulders a white fur lay, but it differed from those of the others. The head and claws of a withered polar bear still stayed fixed to the furs, and the last cry frozen on the monster’s face was a sickening contrast to the leathery smile emerging from the frail man who wore its skin.

  “Imiq?” repeated the man, smiling at Nukilik.

  Nukilik nodded and put his hand to his mouth, as if he were drinking. “We have been long at sea,” he said with a quivering voice as he pointed backward.

  The sinking sun sent a stream of crimson and gold over the flat waters, like sheets of amber hurdling towards the little island.

  “We have silver,” Nukilik said, holding up a silver cup which sparkled in that same sun.

  A few gasps came from the outer circle as Nukilik handed the elder the cup.

  The smile ran from the elder’s face as he inspected the engravings and oblong handle. His eyes shot up, smoldering brown. “Imiq,” he said.

  From a smaller igloo adjoined to the chief’s, two women emerged with sealskin sacks.

  A hexagonal shape made the camp, all centered around the grand igloo which looked to be large as a cottage. As such more hexagonal patterns emerged, men peeking their heads out and smoke trailing from some of them upwards and out.

  “Deckhand,” said the captain. “Double back to the whaleboat and fetch the rifles and two silver cups we brought along. Make haste.”

  “Aye captain!” said Simon.

  “Vámonos! Rápido!” shouted Francisco, shooing Simon away.

  “Arnu!” came a shout of a frail voice. She limped with an ivory cane toward the brother and sister. They ran to meet her and embraced, touching foreheads and laughing.

  The captain shook his head, looking at the scene. “Those two are our ticket to the silver,” he said. “Old man,” he said, “Meet Simon and bring too the dishware, that with the jade.”

  “Aye Captain,” said Jerimiah.

  More cups were traded, in return sacks of water were loaded onto sleds bound for The Roc. Sharp eared hounds whined impatiently as the Inuit children played catch with one of the cups.

  Miska barked and circled a group of laughing children as they all ran in to admire the animal, a flurry of laughs and tiny hands p
atting the beast who gave no objection.

  The captain looked on with a scowl. “Seven silver cups,” he said.

  “And a Hall rifle,” replied Francisco.

  “A god-damned Hall rifle!” The captain looked toward the ocean and shook his head. This is not worth three barrels of water.”

  “Not worth ten,” said Francisco.

  “Damned snakes!”

  Isaac approached Nukilik and Arnaaluk who both sat weeping in front of the old woman’s igloo. She brought out jerked meat.

  “Why cry you?” asked Isaac.

  “A seal,” said Arnaaluk, wiping away tears. “He would sometimes tease them and coax them to snap. All would laugh as they breyed.”

  “Seal?” said Isaac.

  “A talented hunter was he,” said Nukilik. “Showed us the ways in our three summers here on this land. Before we took on the life of whalers. And then the snip of a baby seal infected him and from that he perished.”

  “I am sorry about your uncle,” said the writer. Isaac sat upon a driftwood log near the igloo looking like it had been embedded there since the first dawn.

  Nukilik shook his head and smiled. “We are not sad,” said he. “We merely laugh and cry at his memory, such a man that he was.”

  Arnaaluk laughed and pointed to the ice block on which the children played. “He used to tell us to jump and would catch us every time,” she said. “That block has been there since before man and woman, I do think.”

  Isaac smiled. “Sounds like a fun man indeed.”

  “Eat with us,” said Nukilik. “Like us I am sure you desire a reprieve from the captain and his lot. Let us talk and get to know one another a bit better, and perhaps you can write what you see in your book there,” said the Cree pointing at Isaac’s still bounded journal.

  “I would enjoy that,” answered Isaac.

  The trio lit a fire which glowed fiercely and rose the same and the rest of the crew looked on.

  Francisco grinned from afar and chuckled and squatted on the ground where he napped flint and stone atop dried driftwood and that too smoked then smoldered until orange beacons glowed from igloo and atop ice.

  A naked hand touched the Mexican’s shoulder. Francisco looked up to see a smiling face, another looking to be an elder.