The Death-Defying Pepper Roux

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  If he had been onshore, he would have confessed all to the village priest. The worst things about going to confession with Father Ignatius every other day had been trying to think of something to confess; the look of intense boredom on the priest’s face when Pepper arrived; the noise of yawning from the other compartment of the confessional box. How much more interesting Pepper could have made the poor man’s tedious job now, with these ghastly sins of his. Defying his parents and all the saints. Lying. Theft. Maybe even piracy!

  “I know you!”

  The voice came so readily through the door slats that it might as well have been in the same room. Pepper gripped the side of his bunk and stared at the door.

  “If I’d knowed it was you, I’d of never…” The voice was drunken, the mouth pressed so close to the door that Pepper could hear the wetness of sloppy lips. It did not sound like his father’s voice, but who else…? “Famous, you are,” jeered the voice. “Everyone knows what you are.”

  What? A boy who couldn’t sail a ship? A boy too scared to do as he is told and die? A boy pretending to be someone else? But a good boy, basically? A harmless boy? He had tried, hadn’t he? To remember all the thou shalts and thou shalt nots in the Ten Commandments? To memorize all the psalms, and all the begats and begottens of the Old Testament?

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” whispered the boy in the bunk, as he had each day at confession. But this time, the silhouette on the other side of the grille was not a priest offering forgiveness.

  “Climbing the mast to spy on us! Climbing up there to lord it over us with your ‘I can see you.’ Well, I know what you are, Roux! I can see you—scum that you are!” A cold sweat steeped Pepper from head to foot as the final words were formed and came slobbering through the door: “You’re the Skeleton Man!”

  Pepper did not sleep for the rest of the night. Coiled up under his bunk, he wept salt tears and felt the caress of kraken tentacles up and down his flesh.

  Next day, L’Ombrage passed Finisterre and headed into grayer waters. By evening, she had left behind all sight of land. There was a knock at the cabin door.

  “Bill of lading for the first officer, dear heart?” said the Duchess. Instead of saluting, he pressed his palms together and bowed, as befitted the Japanese kimono he was wearing.

  “Bill who?”

  “Paperwork. Listing the cargo, dear heart? It is customary.” Duchesse looked at him, head on one side, and winked.

  “Give me a minute.”

  Pepper closed the door, biting his lip. He had no idea what a bill of lading looked like, or even how it was spelled. In his weariness he could make no sense of the documents on the cabin desk. He could find nothing mentioning scrap iron. Pianos and porcelain, yes, but nothing about scrap iron, nothing about scrap iron, nothing about forgiveness or scrap iron. He even scrabbled up the blotting paper off the blotter, in his panic.

  Underneath lay a folded sheet of paper bearing the name of the owners: Maritime Sud & Cie. The bill of lading, surely!

  No. Nothing about scrap iron. Only a map position—45° 20' N, 6° 54' W—oh, and a pencil sketch alongside, obviously drawn by someone bored and doodling.

  It was the sketch of a skull.

  Pepper’s eyes rolled upward and his lids fluttered. He pitched forward and cracked his head on the desk. The last thing he heard was the crackle of his ears as they escaped the rim of his naval cap.

  A skeleton climbed up out of Aunty Mireille’s teacup, then crawled between her plate and the toast rack to admire its reflection in the saltcellar. Pepper tried to spear it with his fork but missed, and it clambered on toward him across the breakfast table, laughing as it came….

  A hand momentarily stroked the back of his head and stirred him back to consciousness.

  “A big mistake, to use letterhead paper,” said the Duchess, tugging the sheet out of Pepper’s fist. He memorized the figures—45° 20' N, 6° 54' W—then set it alight with a match. “Especially with the added sketch, silly boys. Tell them not to do it again, chéri, when you collect your bonus.” He reached out a finger, lifted Pepper’s bangs, and winced at the size of the bump on his forehead.

  “You don’t understand, Duchesse! It’s a sign! That’s where! That’s where it’s going to happen!”

  Duchesse studied the captain’s pinched, weary, tearstained face for a long time. “Mmm. But then it won’t be our first, will it, dear heart?” he said, leaning on the words as if they were brass tacks. “You and I are old hands at this game. Like undertakers, we deal in coffins…. It’s a bit late for us to try to change the way things work in the coffin trade.”

  And Pepper took the hint and fell silent. Because either he was Paul Roux, an ignorant boy pretending to be his father, or he was Captain Gilbert Roux, drink-sodden Old Man of L’Ombrage and several other ill-fated ships. Pepper was going to die, at 45° 20' N, 6° 54' W, but then—as Duchesse said—it was a bit late to try to change Fate.

  Pepper sat for so long—frozen with fear, head throbbing—that the sun passed overhead and L’Ombrage chugged into the Bay of Biscay. The speaking tube squealed once, but he ignored it. He heard—briefly—the hatch cover outside being raised by winch and cable. Strange. (Perhaps England was very close now—how would he know?) The Duchess came with a tray of supper, but Pepper did not open the door to him. “I’m not hungry. Go away.”

  It was a shame. He had loved the sea—every indigo smell of it, every dolphin, every kicking wave, every whooping cheer that broke from the ship’s whistle. He loved Duchesse’s scrambled eggs, and the gold braid on his captain’s jacket, and sliding the cap onto his head, folding his ears forward to keep it high on his brow. A shame for it all to end. But tonight he would—he really must—search the ship until he found his father, wherever he was lurking, and hand back the cap, the papers, the ship’s log: name and rank. Say sorry. Gilbert Roux (Captain) might flog him or hang him from the yardarm for piracy, but it could not be helped. Pepper had not been to confession for a week, so if he died now, unpunished, he would certainly go to Hell and be punished forevermore, and that would be worse.

  Aunty Mireille had taught him lots about Hell.

  That night, moonlight puddled and curded on the decks, turning them white. Pepper half expected to skid as he scoured the ship for Gilbert Roux. He looked in the paint store and under the lifeboat covers. The hatch of the hold had indeed been lifted slightly—as if to keep the scrap iron from suffocating—but nothing moved down there. In fact all he found, after ten minutes’ searching…was Roche sitting naked astride the ship’s rail.

  “Be very careful, Mr. Roche,” said Pepper, worried that the man might slip into the sea.

  Roche’s head snapped up, and the moonlight turned his face ghost white.

  “What are you doing?” asked Pepper, knowing that it is polite to express an interest in other people’s work.

  Roche opened his left hand, and Pepper went closer, thinking he was being shown something. It seemed to be one of those brackets used to hang up the fire buckets. Moving close also filled his nose with a familiar smell: one he had not smelled since it had sunk its teeth in his ear. Fate smelled of garlic and rum, thought Pepper, as Roche swung his leg inboard, shifted the metal bracket into his right fist, and slashed at him with its hook.

  “Skeleton Man.”

  Pepper ran, but Roche was so close behind that the hook hit him repeatedly on the shoulders, then snagged in the half belt of his jacket and was pulled out of Roche’s fist. Pepper collided with the various sand-filled fire buckets that Roche had lifted down so as to steal the brackets. Sand hissed across the deck. There was nowhere to hide. Even his thoughts could not catch their breath.

  If I say…the darkness shall cover me…. Yea, the darkness is no darkness….

  “Mama! Aunty Mireille!” The half belt came unstitched: The hook, still embedded in its fabric, banged into the back of Pepper’s legs as he ran. “Saint Constance! Father Michel! Mama! Holy Mary!” But maybe the saints
and angels locked up house at night and shut their shutters, as Mama had always done. “Roche! Stop! I’m the captain! Don’t!”

  He almost tripped over the partly raised hatch cover: The hold gaped below him like the mouth of Hell, and the smell of Roche was in every breath that he gulped down. Colliding with the foot of the funnel, Pepper began to climb—if he could just get up high!—but feeling for handholds, he soon met only with hot metal, and dropped back down, fully expecting to land in Roche’s arms.

  His fall to the deck knocked the wind out of him. Nothing softened his landing. Nothing. Nothing and no one.

  Looking back the way he had come, Pepper imagined the momentary flicker of an angel’s white, lacy robe. But of Roche there was not a sign. Gasping and reeling, he fled to his cabin and spent the rest of the night on his callused knees, burned palms pressed together, apologizing to everyone in Heaven that he could think of for the sin of being alive.

  He supposed the knock at the door was Duchesse bringing his breakfast, but it was the first officer. Pepper (remembering the lost bill of lading) hastily shut the door in his face. What to do? Berceau knocked again, louder and more urgently. Pepper opened the door.

  “Accident on deck, sir,” said Berceau. “Roche has…taken a tumble.”

  Apparently, Roche had lost his footing during one of his nightly prowls, skidded on some spilled sand, and fallen twenty feet into the open hold, landing on a length of rusty metal fencing. His face had the agonized, waxy whiteness of the saints in the church at home.

  So this was what a fall looked like: neither quick nor clean.

  Pepper went down on his knees in the cluttered hold. “Don’t worry, Roche. Lie still, Roche. Soon get you out, Roche,” said Captain Pepper Roux.

  Roche opened a red-rimmed mouth, but no words came out. He looked up at the square of sky above them, and seagull shapes drifted across his vacant eyes. The crew had thrown a blanket over him, but a line of sharp points still stuck up through the cloth, like the bony spine on a mackerel. Rummaging in his jacket pocket, Pepper brought out a prayer, penned in his aunt’s purple ink on lilac notepaper—a prayer to Saint Constance.

  Kindly pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

  Your obedient servant,

  Mireille Lepont (Miss)

  It was hard to know where to put it on a naked man, so Pepper tucked it into Roche’s armpit, murmuring an apology.

  For surely the fall had been meant for Pepper? Surely the seagulls had gathered over the site of a death days overdue? The hold had yawned for Pepper but accidentally swallowed Roche.

  The man impaled on the scrap iron turned his eyes on Pepper, reached out a trembling hand, and caught him by the throat. The hand was very cold, and powerless to grip. Taking it in his own, Pepper began to recite the last rites, tugging each icy finger in turn, just as his aunty had done for him when he was little.

  But before the end, the hand slackened and the eyes turned upward into the skull. Roche had mopped up death like a lump of bread mopping a greasy plate.

  THREE

  PROTESTER

  The business of the last rites vastly impressed the crew of L’Ombrage, gathered around the brink of the hold. For the first time, they looked at their Old Man with startled respect. They were even more impressed when Captain Roux proved to know the funeral service by heart…though no one offered to pry Roche off the rusty metalwork, so Pepper had to stop short of the bit about committing him “to the sea in the sure and certain hope of salvation.”

  “Later,” said Berceau.

  Nobody dressed up for the service either, except the Duchess, who put on red satin as a mark of disrespect.

  “Amen,” said Pepper at the end of the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Good riddance,” said the crew—which was not a response Pepper had ever heard before but which he presumed was a special seagoing expression of farewell. His efforts gave Pepper no joy: Couched on his scrapmetal bed, Roche did not look to be any more at peace because of all those words.

  Later that day, with Roche’s body still lying in the hold, Duchesse came and broke the bad news. “Married man,” he said.

  “No I’m not!” exclaimed Pepper, and sat back in his captain’s chair so sharply that it almost toppled over.

  “Roche, dear heart,” said the Duchess patiently. “Roche was a married man. The customary letter is required. To the widow.”

  And here, for the first time, was a duty no one else was willing to do for Captain Pepper.

  “Not my province,” said the Duchess.

  “Not me,” said the second mate.

  “Not me,” said Berceau, spotting the bill of lading on the floor and smoothing it out against his thigh. Pianos and porcelain, it read.

  “Doesn’t he have…didn’t he have a best friend? Someone who’s known him for a long time?” Pepper begged them.

  But Roche had no friends. So Captain Pepper was obliged to sit at his desk with a blank sheet of paper in front of him and a pencil in his hand. He wrote the name of the ship in one corner. He wrote the address of the widow in the other. He wrote: I am very sorry to say….

  Then he sent for the crew.

  They all squeezed into his cabin, elbow to elbow, knees slightly bent because of the low deckhead. What did they know about Mr. Roche? asked Pepper.

  “He was a pig,” said Annecy.

  “Used to bet the deck boys he could knock them down with one punch,” said Gombert. “Broke their faces. Took their money.”

  “Beat his wife,” said Bougon. “Used to boast about it.”

  “Don’t know how she lives. He spent all his money on whores; never sent a penny home.”

  “He sold the pans out of the galley,” said the cook bitterly.

  “Heard he killed a man once, in Nantes.”

  Pepper sighed. “There’s good in everyone,” he suggested hopefully. “My priest says…”

  “He was good with his fists,” said Annecy.

  “Perhaps you could share with us some of your own impressions of the man, sir,” suggested the Duchess, fretful at having the captain’s private sanctum cluttered up with people.

  Pepper thought hard. “He wanted to kill me.”

  The assembled crew nodded thoughtfully. “He was a rare pig, that one,” said Annecy.

  “Amen,” said the others, and squeezed out of the door again.

  Pepper stared at the blank paper. A dozen times he wrote the address and began:

  I am awfuly sorry…

  I am paned to tell you…

  I hope you wont…

  I wish I did not have to in form you…

  He imagined the woman—Mme. Yvette Roche—opening and reading his letter. In his imagination, she took on the face of his own mother: the shoulders folding forward, the head sinking into grief.

  L’Ombrage

  Apartment 19

  27 rue Méjeunet

  Aigues Mortes

  Dear Madame Roche,

  I am very sorry in deed to tell you the sad news, but your poor husbund Monsieur Roche is dead. I did not no him very well, but I expect you did. I am sure he is happy with the saints.

  Your obediant servent…

  Pepper snatched up the letter and crammed it into his pocket. On the whole, he thought she would much rather not know at all. That way, she could go on hoping all was not lost, even when it was.

  “How will she manage without the money?” he asked. But the Duchess simply went on grating nutmeg over a bowl of custard. “I say we should…I mean, could we…What say we don’t tell the owners about Roche being dead? That way they won’t stop his wages—not till the end of the trip, anyway.”

  The Duchess did look up, then, and Pepper assumed nutmegs must be like onions, for there were tears in the steward’s eyes. “I think that would be a very great kindness to his wife, mon brave.”

  The next thought made Pepper’s gorge heave, but one of his duties as captain was surely to help a dead crew member find eternal rest. “I
expect you could make him a nice shroud, Duchesse, if I could just get him off the…get him up out…get him into the sea.”

  For the first time since they had met, the steward was completely at a loss. “Well, he can go down with the ship, can’t he?” he said, hurrying to the door, sickened by the horrific notion of Pepper wrestling with a corpse. Outside, Duchesse recovered his calm, smoothed his red satin, and patted his hair into place. Then he caught hold of the nearest crew member by the shirt, dragged him close, and laid a finger to his lips. Never again did the crew mention the name of Roche or the small matter of his death.

  “Who’d miss a pig like that?” observed Annecy.

  Sometimes a shipping company can make more money from losing a ship than from keeping it. After all, ships are forever sinking, so they are always insured. A ship with a cargo of pianos and porcelain is insured for far more than some rusty, dilapidated hulk carrying scrap iron. And once that ship is sunk and on the seabed, who is to say what cargo she was carrying? She will keep her secret as well as a dead man in his coffin. Maybe that is why such hulks are called “coffin ships.”

  At position 45° 20' N, 6° 54' W, with a dirty sea running and L’Ombrage sitting over 2,600 fathoms of water, the engineer deliberately opened her sea cocks. Sip by sip, she began to swallow the sea. Only the engineer, Berceau, and Gilbert Roux were being paid by the owners to sink her. The Duchess was in on it, of course. But the rest of the crew were told L’Ombrage had sprung a leak and were as scared as if L’Ombrage had hit an iceberg or been attacked by the kraken.

  “Time to go,” said the captain’s steward to the captain.

  “Why?”

  Duchesse looked exasperated. With the ship’s claxon blaring and the air as full of filthy language as spray, even the old-style, drunken Captain Roux might have grasped that the ship was sinking. “Time to go,” said the Duchess again. He was dressed once more in trousers and oiled jersey, and had hacked his hair short with a pair of scissors.