Kings of the Sea
Page 36
After dinner he asked her again about the wreck, and she told him. She spared him nothing, since she knew that the court of inquiry in Halifax would inevitably produce even more graphic accounts from survivors. And all of it because someone’s reckoning was off less than twenty miles across more than a thousand miles, of ocean. The night had been clear; it was nothing but criminal carelessness. She thought that they could never prove the real source of the accident. The best they could hope for was to bring out that it couldn’t have been the fault of the ship. Sam and the captain and the ship’s officers were all dead — it was more than doubtful the crew knew the source of the liquor with which they had all been provided so liberally, and certainly the real culprits would hardly come forth to admit their complicity.
The three-day growth of beard on Christian’s face gave him that scruffy look that all men have when they are not really bearded but simply unshaven, yet at the same time the tawny stubble increased the lion resemblance she had been so struck by on that first night. And lion he would have to be to face down the packs of wolves and jackals howling for his destruction. There were no longer captain and officers to blame; he was the only scapegoat left.
When she had finished her account, he buried his head in his hands. “It was worse than I thought.” His voice was muffled.
“Didn’t the innkeeper or the servants here say anything about it?”
“We haven’t exactly been engaging in much casual conversation. I’d never have dared go to earth so close by if I’d known it was as bad as that. All those poor damned people, and nothing I could have done. Nothing, that is, but watch them all die.” His tone was bitter.
Impulsively she sat down beside him and put her arms around him. “Judge, Judge, you did all anyone could have. If it hadn’t been for you, there are many walking the earth right now who would be at the bottom of the sea.”
“Kate, do you remember the night I found you?” he asked, his head still in his hands.
“Yes, Judge, I do.” How could she forget it?
“I feel like that tonight, Kate — at the end of something, maybe of myself. I had no idea so many had died, but I knew some must have. Sam and Thomas, I never even thought of their dying, you never do with people you love. But even without them I knew I was guilty.”
Kate started to say again that he wasn’t at fault, but he went on speaking through her murmured words.
“Yes, I was guilty, just as I was guilty of Dorrie and Shannon and Deirdre, just as I was guilty of Roger and all of those other doomed young men. Do you know, only three of us survived, Roger and another man I could never later find, and myself, and I was the one who wanted to die … Jesus, Kate, I’ve been so guilty for so many things, I’ve done so much wrong … My father called it the Wendigo, but no matter what you call it, it follows you. It followed me with far more reason than it followed my father, and I was going to give in to it … and then you came when I had gone as mad as my mother — did I ever tell you she died mad? When you opened that door, I knew it was going to be you, there was no one else it could have been. You are the only real person I’ve ever loved, all the others I made up in my mind … It was an imaginary Arabella I was besotted with for so long, an imaginary Dorrie I betrayed … I imagined the woman I wanted my mother to be, and imagined my father, too, only like Arabella he kept refusing to fit my vision. Only you have always been real … I’m afraid — no, not afraid, terrified — of what I am coming to feel for you.”
He looked at her then, his amber eyes staring despairingly into hers. “Hold me, Kate — would you do that? Don’t leave me alone tonight. I’m tired and hurting and a little drunk and so full of remorse and despair and sorrow …”
She squeezed his shoulder and stood up. Methodically she put the dirty dishes on their tray outside the door and went to a commode down the hall. When she returned, she found him in bed, his clothes sprawled over a chair, his eyes closed. She blew out the lamp and without self-consciousness took off her clothes by the light of the dying fire. She rolled him onto his good side with his back to her and fitted her body to his, her arm across his waist, her hand resting on the hard muscles of his belly. He sighed and took her hand in his, then fell asleep, his chest rising and falling in a quiet, calm rhythm.
She was dreaming that she and her father were pursued by something or someone she never saw, and were running on ice that cracked and gave beneath their feet, the cracks radiating out like giant cobwebs. A black hole opened up and swallowed her father, and for a while she could see his white anguished face peering up at her through the ice. Then she was left alone in a dreary endless winter landscape, the only sound the thin cracking and tearing of the ice as she ran and waited to be swallowed up herself. Soundlessly she screamed Christian’s name. The dream faded as still half asleep she was aware of his getting up, the clink of the lid on the chamberpot just as she used to hear it when she lived with Charles, then the splashing of water as he poured it into the basin to wash. She drifted off to sleep again and wasn’t even aware when he came back to bed.
A gray early light was coming through the shutters when she woke once again, this time wide awake. She was now lying with her back to him, his arm thrown across her body. She could feel him warm along her back and over the curve of her buttocks. She could also feel that he was aroused and that his breath came fast and warm against her neck. The intensity of the feeling that shot through her in response startled her.
“Judge,” she said quietly at last, “I know that you don’t approve of employers who seduce employees, but don’t you suppose we could forget about all that this once?”
She felt rather than heard him chuckle, and the hand that had rested on her stomach closed around her breast as she felt his mouth against her neck. When she gasped and thrust against the hand that caressed her breast, he turned her over to face him and began to make love to her in earnest. His mouth on her breast sent blinding shocks bursting through her, and his hand between her legs was dipped in liquid fire. The agony and the death and the knowledge of all those poor drowned bodies that would never again feel affection or warmth or the touch of a lover’s hand, the kiss of a lover’s mouth, all these things drove them to the kind of celebration of life that no mere love-making could have attained. His injuries forgotten, they ate and drank of each other, borne on a rough tide of passion that came to an only momentary end with his cry of “Oh God, Kate, come with me!” Their thirst seemed unslakable as twice, three times they rose up onto the blinding plateau of the outer edges of desire, leaving behind all of the pain and fear and sorrow and guilt and loneliness and denial and wanting that had driven their bodies together in the dim light of the breaking day. His body became both indistinguishable from hers and at the same time a blessedly different counterpart, the touch of a mouth or a hand enough to set alight yet once again the convolution of action and reaction flaring into a conflagration consuming them both.
At last and finally spent, quenched, satiated, they lay sprawled on their backs, her head on his naked shoulder. He stroked her hair gently as he lay there, his breathing quieting. She realized with a smile that he didn’t, like Charles, turn away and seem to sulk when his desire was satisfied. They said nothing then of how good it had been, of what it might or might not have meant, they only slipped gently into a deep sleep still holding each other.
When she wakened later, it was to find his side of the bed cold and empty. Alarmed, she sat bolt upright and sank back smiling as she saw him standing in his shirtsleeves over a steaming basin carefully drawing a long, wicked-looking razor down one soaped cheek.
“I hope you weren’t planning to sneak out on a poor erring maid,” she said banteringly, but a cold shaft of fear knotted her stomach. She knew him too well to think that he would show any irritation or contempt, but she dreaded the easy, good-humored camaraderie with which she did think he would answer her. He meant so very much to her now that she knew his casual friendship would hurt almost as much as his despising her would
have.
Without answering her, he went on methodically shaving. When he had finished, he walked over toward the bed, wiping the last of the lather away with the end of the towel around his neck. He took her chin in his hand and raised her face to his.
“You are my very own love — you know that, don’t you?” he said almost conversationally.
Struck dumb, she could only attempt to nod against the grip of his fingers.
His mouth widened into a smile so tender and at the same time joyous that she thought her heart would burst. “Then up you get, wench. It’s a long way to Halifax, and the day’s half gone.”
Chapter VII
“It should be clear by now to everyone in this courtroom that the Circe set out from Liverpool with an insufficient amount of coal, having been shorted by the financial greed of the Blue Hand Company, and that although she put in for Halifax as being some four hundred miles closer than her scheduled port of New York, she nonetheless ran short and was cast helplessly adrift, her engines silent, on the lee shore where she met her doom. As if this stinginess and negligence were not criminal enough, she was sent out with insufficient boats to rescue her passengers should the need arise, and the single boat that was finally successfully launched was commandeered by Mr. Judgment Christian Hand, the Circe’s owner, who sought to save himself at the expense of the lives of the women and children who should have taken up whatever room there was in the boat. This cowardly act of desertion so panicked and inflamed the crew that the captain and a passenger met with their deaths as a result. I therefore respectfully rest the case against the Blue Hand Shipping Company, may God forgive them because I cannot.”
Russell Long, in the position of unofficial prosecutor, sat down. As things were going, he would soon enough be the official one. There was a stir and buzz among the onlookers as Sir Howard Grenville banged his gavel and declared a recess until two that afternoon.
“Damn that girl!” Poulson said. “Where in hell could she have gone?”
Aaron Fine shrugged and turned to the lean bewigged man standing with them. “Do you think you can pull it off without her, George?”
George Pendrake shook his head gloomily. “Not a chance. If what she told you was the truth, the only way we’re going to prove it is to question her as to reliable witnesses. Those of the crew I’ve talked to claim there was not enough coal and that Hand did in truth try to save himself. The fact that no ship can begin to carry enough boats for everyone aboard won’t excuse it. As for the passengers, each one has a different story, and for any one we might find to tell our side, the prosecutor could find ten to deny it. You heard the witnesses called; their testimony was very damaging, to say the least. A nasty bit of business, all of this, and no mistake.”
“Well, do the best you can, George — I know you will,” Aaron Fine said.
Pendrake only shrugged and pulled a sour face. The three of them somberly paced down the marble hall and out onto the broad steps that led to the cobbled street. Suddenly Fine and Poulson came to an abrupt halt. “Damn!” Poulson muttered under his breath. Coming up the steps toward them were a hatless man and a woman arm in arm, the sun glinting from the red and silver in his hair. They stopped as they saw the three men and waited.
“Damn it all, Gideon,” Poulson said at last, “I told you not to come. There’s nothing to be done here.”
“I came to bury my boy,” Gideon answered evenly. “And I came to clear his name.”
Pendrake had done earlier. “I doubt there’s much you or anyone can do,” he finished at Iasi. He turned to Pendrake. “As you’ve gathered, no doubt, this is the boy’s father, Gideon Hand. Gideon, George Pendrake is reputed to be the best barrister in Canada; we were fortunate to get him.”
The two men shook hands, and Pendrake said, “I wish we had met in happier circumstances, Mr. Hand. The problem is that witnesses remember not so much what actually happened as what they want to think happened — or have been led to believe happened. According to his secretary, Christian Hand was a hero. According to nearly everyone else, a villain. That, to be brief, is our situation.”
“Have you begun to call your witnesses yet?” Gideon asked.
“We’re due to begin this afternoon, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know whom we’ll call. The secretary has disappeared, perhaps the victim of foul play, and Mr. Hand’s man Roger has slipped back into a coma. He was hit on the head when he misbehaved in a tavern, but who knows what really happened?” His whole demeanor was discouraging. “I’ve been looking for crewmen who were in the boat with Hand — they can’t all have perished — but they seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I can’t even get a straight story as to who was really in the boat.”
Gideon looked at him silently for a moment. “Get the judge to postpone hearing the defense until tomorrow morning, or even later if you can,” he said at last. “I’m going to find one of those crewmen, if any survived.”
“Oh? And how do you intend to do that when we couldn’t?” Pendrake had his feathers ruffled.
Gideon smiled wryly. “I was a seaman once myself.”
The woman with Gideon looked tired and wan, but at this she smiled gently and squeezed his arm. “Good for you, Gideon. There’ll be all the time in the world later to grieve.”
“Gideon —” Poulson started to say, then stopped and grinned. “Good luck, lad. You’re our last hope.”
Afternoon was shading off to evening when Gideon, dressed in seaman’s clothes, entered the third saloon. The place was lit only by oil lamps, apparently for atmosphere, and the smoke from cigars and pipes lay in thick oily coils about the dark figures crouched around tables drinking. A lively game of dice was going on in one corner where the chairs and tables had been pushed back to make room for the shouting players on the floor.
There were no empty tables, and Gideon got his drink and sat down with two others. “Know anything about the Sally Goode?” he asked conversationally. “She’s signing up a crew tomorrow, they tell me.”
“Don’t ship on ’er, mate,” one of the men at the table advised. “Her captain’s easygoing, it ain’t that, but oh Gawd the food! Weevils and roaches and not much of them.”
“Better weevils and roaches than the bottom of the sea like them on the Circe.”
“That was a wild trip, right enough. Never had so much booze in my life,” the talkative one said.
“Shut up!” his companion said.
“Why should I?” the first one demanded truculently. “I don’t owe them nuthin’. Like to drowned, I did, and what would they’ve cared?”
“You’ll find out who cares if you go running your mouth off.”
“They didn’t say nuthin’ about sinking ’er,” the first one insisted sullenly. “We all could’ve ended up in Davy Jones’ locker. What a fuckup, running up on them goddam rocks at twelve knots.”
“Will you shut up? How d’you know who ’e is?”
“You didn’t lose that hand in a courtroom, did yer, mate?”
Gideon held up his hook. “’Twas on the Beryl Queen around the Horn in ’29. Grommet Poulson hisself took it off with a meat cleaver.”
“See? What’d I tell yer?” the first one said to his companion. “What I want ter know is where is the bloody bonus they promised us, tell me that, bucko. They’ve got what they want now and they know damned well none of us will dare ter talk. We’d be flogged and keelhauled did anybody find out what really went on.”
“Stand you fellers a round?” Gideon asked easily, and without waiting for a reply slammed his hand on the table to get the barkeep’s attention. “I heard you was short on coal.”
“That’s nuthin’ but bullshit,” the first one said. “We steamed up on them rocks, let me tell yer. If we’d drifted in, we’d hardly’ve been holed. Fuckin’ orficers with their thumbs up their bums steamed right onto the rocks. Hell, if’n we hadn’t no engines and was under sail, we’d have been blown halfway back to Queenstown, way the wind was.”
“Don’t know nuthin’ about that,” the informant answered disappointingly, “but Davey here was with the boat. He could tell you.”
“Fuck it,” the other said disgustedly. “Who would know what Hand had on his mind? Likes of him don’t tell ordinary seamen like me what they’re up to.”
“Drowned, did he?”
“Dunno. Guess ’e did, but not then anyways. ’E climbed the cliff with the line whilst the rest of us was still down there on the beach. Bleedin’ like a stuck pig, ’e was. Those bloody farmers watchin’ wouldn’t lift a finger ter help us, neither.”
“Did he now? Tell you what, mate. I been told there’s a grand reward for anyone with information about the wreck. I was trying to think how I could somehow tell a story and collect it. You’ve given me a story now, and I’m obliged. ’Nother drink?”
“Reward, eh?” the seaman said guardedly. “Just who’s givin’ out this here reward? They were some toffs around a couple of days back wantin’ ter know what happened, but they didn’t say nuthin’ about a reward.”
Gideon shrugged. “They said to give any information to a Mr. Fine at the Hotel Splendide, that’s all I know. I’m going, I’ll tell you, and maybe make myself a little packet to stay on shore with for a while. There’s a house called Maggie’s —”
“But you wasn’t never on the ship,” the talkative one protested. “You got no right ter no reward.”
Gideon looked disdainful. “Well, you ain’t going, are you? And I didn’t see your shipmates exactly crowding around the Splendide, so why shouldn’t I? Who’s to say I wasn’t with the Circe?”