by Joan Druett
“You’ll have to ask him that when he comes to,” Wiki said tiredly, and was startled to hear Forsythe’s sardonic guffaw.
“You must be joking,” the big Virginian said.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s quite a weapon of yours, Mr. Deputy Coffin. You should be proud of it. This bastard who killed Zack and done his best to kill you, too, is as dead as last week’s mutton.”
Thirty-five
Another day, another burial, and another argument about who should conduct the service. Joel Hammond reckoned that Rochester should do it. Not only had he taken the service before, but he was the highest-ranking American there, he figured, and a representative of the U.S. Navy to boot. George pointed out that not only did he not feel like lauding a man who had murdered a brother navy officer, but this time Lieutenant Forsythe was in attendance, and it was a well-known fact that Lieutenant Forsythe outranked him when they were not on board the brig Swallow. Forsythe, for his part, delivered the information that there was no point in asking him, as he was only there for the satisfaction of seeing the dirt stamped down over the body of the man who had killed his best friend.
Then Lawrence J. Smith arrived and the fuss came to a sudden stop as he immediately claimed the right to conduct the service, being the most important person around. Then there was a long pause as he ruffled through a Bible for the most portentous passage possible, while the coffin lay in the open hole that had been dug next to Captain Reed’s grave, under the same dusty tree.
For Wiki, the scene was startlingly reminiscent of the day of Ezekiel Reed’s burial. The grave-digging party leaned on their shovels; the seamen who had come to witness the burial shuffled about in the hot sun; and Annabelle Reed wept into a handkerchief. He himself was keeping a tactful distance from the mourners, lingering about the fringes of the cemetery and contemplating headstones. Vaguely recollecting the crypt that had looked as if it had often been lifted to receive more coffins before being closed again, he hunted about until he found it. It had sunk even further, he noticed—it was even less level with the sward. When he put his weight on the big rectangular stone, it tipped so that he could see recently disturbed dirt where it had been lifted and then carefully set back in place. Then he saw scrapes in the pathway nearby which matched the ruts in the track up the cliff, and indentations where hoisting equipment had been lodged.
So this was where the crew of the sloop Hero had hidden the bullion, he thought in a strangely remote kind of way. He wondered rather ghoulishly how many skeletons they had uncovered while they were enlarging the hole beneath the slab, but otherwise he felt an almost complete lack of interest, because his mind was mostly taken up with wondering whether it was right that he should be there. After all, it was the funeral of a man he’d killed himself, something about which his feelings were muddled.
The killing had been in self-defense, but he had to keep on reassuring himself about that—which was crazy, because he realized now how close Alphabet had come to killing him that first day, when he had been testing the timbers in the hold. He remembered the strong smell of onions on the Cajun’s breath; he remembered that he had felt threatened, even then. Then, Alphabet had relaxed, and stepped away—because he, Wiki, had confessed that when he was sixteen years old he’d been madly in love with Annabelle Green.
Wiki turned to another worry—Annabelle herself. She now behaved as if she hated him—as if she felt he had betrayed her. For hours she’d refused to speak to him, taking refuge in hysterics instead. Finally, however, she’d admitted that her cousin had indeed been in the galley when she had taken the bottle of brandy to the cabin. And Festin? Robert Festin made even less sense than usual when questioned, but that didn’t matter, because it was so obvious now that he had been in the pantry all the time. Forsythe, at last, was entirely in the clear. The man Annabelle had glimpsed on the quarterdeck had been her own cousin, though she had refused to confirm it, weeping wildly instead.
Wiki left the unstable stone slab, with its mute evidence of where Alphabet Green had hidden the bullion, to stand by one of the tallest upright headstones. Lieutenant Smith found his place in the book, and then droned on and on while insects whined, birds chirped, and the sun beat down. At long last he ran to a stop, and the grave-digging party was at work again, tossing dirt into the hole. The thudding as clods hit the coffin lid and then the shovels smacked them down seemed unnaturally loud.
To get away from the unsettling noise Wiki left the burial ground altogether, heading down the track to where some men were wrenching a plank from the wreck of the Hero. As he neared, Wiki could hear them drilling out treenails. The Hero’s running aground had probably happened at night, he thought, and definitely during a gale, because she’d been run up so hard that the bowsprit was lost in the scrub. It had been an act of great courage and desperation on the part of her master—whoever that brave captain had been.
Annabelle had confirmed, too, that her cousin had been the supercargo of the Hero, and that he’d fled to Pernambuco in the sloop’s boat with the others. Wiki remembered how weather-beaten Alphabet had looked, undoubtedly a heritage of that passage, and wondered what had happened to the other seven men in the boat, along with their knowledge of where the bullion had been hidden. Had Green bought them off, or had he got rid of them by some other means? Wiki remembered the savage look on his face as he’d attacked, and grimly thought that the second was the more likely option.
As he arrived on the beach he heard a cheer as the plank came free from the sloop. Borne by willing shoulders onto a flat patch of grass, it was energetically attacked by the boatswain and carpenter, who strove with their adzes to turn it into a match for the gap in the Annawan hull—wider at the bow end, and narrowing amidships. The funeral party was straggling down the trail now. Hearing the commotion on the beach, the seamen broke away from the procession, running eagerly to join in the work.
The day progressed with the crashing of sledgehammers as the replacement plank was slammed into place. By evening a caulking gang was dangling over the side of the schooner on lines, working with their wedges, caulking stuff, and tar. The work on the schooner was very obviously coming to a culmination—so Lawrence J. Smith called for a conference.
It should be obvious to everyone, he declared when they were all assembled, that nailing a few sheets of copper over the replacement plank and then letting out the cable so the schooner could tip back to her rightful level could be managed with ease by the Annawan men who were left, plus the cutter’s men under the supervision of Lieutenant Forsythe, with Wiki Coffin to assist. The murderer had been uncovered, executed, and properly put to rest—or so he pointed out—and there was no reason whatsoever for the two navy vessels to linger here. They could rest the night, and then they must weigh anchor.
As the early sun rose Wiki stood glumly on the quarterdeck of the Swallow, watching the eight sealers come on board with their sea chests on their shoulders. Folger and Bill Boyd, he noted, were bringing their tool chests, as well—it was the first time he realized that they owned their own tools. He wondered how they felt about their abrupt transition to the navy. The previous day he had noticed the sealing gang conferring in a huddled group at least twice, just as they had after their sea chests had been searched. There was the same surly, hostile air about them, and he had felt a touch of the foreboding that had assailed him every time he had pictured the entire complement of the Annawan boarding the Swallow for the passage to Rio. But there were only eight of them, he emphatically thought—and it shouldn’t take many days for George to rendezvous with Captain Wilkes.
Nevertheless, he said to George, “You’ll take care?”
“I won’t have the chance to do anything else, with that panicky little prawn in command of the other ship.”
Rochester was standing in his favorite pose with his hands lightly clasped behind his back, but his expression, as he watched Smith take on six of the brig’s men, was not benign at all. One of them was the Swallow�
�s cook, which meant that Stoker would have to be cook as well as steward. George, though he had simmered on the verge of open rage, hadn’t dared argue, knowing that a highly biased version of the events at Shark Island was going to be poured into Captain Wilkes’s ears whatever happened, and rebellion would only make it worse.
He turned his glare to the Annawan and said, “I wish the poisonous little bastard had seen reason and given us one more day—just to make sure that she doesn’t go back to leaking the instant she’s on even keel again.”
Wiki said, “She won’t.”
“Nevertheless,” said George, but didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he looked at Wiki and then away, saying again, “I’ll try to make sure that we don’t get more than a day’s sail ahead of you. You have the course I gave you?”
“Aye,” said Wiki.
“You don’t have to stay, you know. Forsythe wouldn’t care if you didn’t.”
“I know that,” Wiki said wryly. But he didn’t want to leave until he’d somehow got Annabelle to forgive him—and he thought he knew the way to do it.
Forsythe was conning the Flying Fish out to the open sea. Lawrence J. Smith had weighed his certain knowledge of the southerner’s terrifying seamanship against his fears of unknown reefs and shoals, and had opted for the devil he knew best. Accordingly, the cutter followed, and so Wiki was able to stay on the Swallow until the two vessels had made the other side of the shark-fin-shaped headland.
Then it was time to leave. “E hoa,” he said. He and George shook hands in their special way, forearms linked, and then hit each other hard many times on the shoulder, as pakeha men who are great friends do when meeting or parting. Wiki dropped a canvas bag with a few possessions into the cutter, where his taiaha was already carefully stowed, and then picked up the parrot cage. Stoker had been almost as tragic at being parted from the parrot as he was at being relegated to the position of cook-cum-steward, but Wiki was determined to give the bird to Annabelle and watch her joy and relief as she released it. In his mind, he could see the smile in her eyes. That, he thought, was when she’d relent and forgive him.
“You’re set?” said Forsythe, at the tiller. Wiki nodded, remembering belatedly that he had forgotten to tell George where the bullion was hidden but not really caring, and they were off. Within instants, it seemed, the Swallow and the Flying Fish were out of sight.
In a remarkably short time they were back in the cove, where Festin was eagerly waiting. “Ho, ho,” he said when Wiki waded onto the beach with the parrot cage in one hand. “Pâté à la râpure tonight, no?” he joked. “Bloody good.” Being such an admirer of Forsythe’s style, he had opted to join the cutter’s camp rather than stay with the Annawan men where he properly belonged, and pâté à la râpure was the name in his language for what Constant Keith referred to as chicken stew pie.
“He’s not for eating,” Wiki said firmly, and hung the cage from a branch of a nearby tree. The parrot, he noticed, seemed to like it. The bird looked almost as good as new, though its beak was peeling in bits like the skin of a rotten orange. As Stoker had predicted, the scales over its eyes were coming loose. Then Wiki turned and stretched, looking at the curling lace of the surf on the damp gold sand and the turquoise of the lagoon beyond. It was an idyllic spot, but he couldn’t wait to leave. When the cutter’s men were ready for the afternoon’s work, Wiki went with them to the schooner to help the remaining crew, who were in the hold shoveling the ballast from one side to the other.
Already, the hull was beginning to creak as the Annawan tried to set herself back on an even keel, so Wiki and the cutter’s men boarded the raft and started letting out the cable. With more cracking noises the schooner began to roll. More shoveling, more slacking of the hawser, and her masts began to revolve against the sky. Then evening came, and the masts were upright—and in the morning her holds were still dry.
“Goddamn it,” observed Forsythe in disgust. “If that pompous little bugger had waited just twelve more hours, we could’ve sailed with the Swallow.”
Thirty-six
While the cutter’s men were getting the boat ready for departure in the morning, Wiki scrambled over the rockfall, finding Hammond and the remaining Annawan crew assembled on the beach. All the tents save Annabelle’s had vanished, their contents removed to the brig, and hers was being taken down. Hammond was talking to Annabelle, but as Wiki came up he turned and walked away. It was Wiki, then, who helped her into the boat, though her hand was stiff and unwelcoming, and he was the one who helped her back on board the schooner.
Then she and Wiki were alone on the deck, and the beach was quite empty. Hammond and the Annawan crew had trailed up the cliff, disappearing from sight at the first steep bend. Were they going to the graveyard to check the whereabouts of the bullion, ready to retrieve it when the cutter had gone? Perhaps.
Annabelle said matter-of-factly, “So again we part.”
“Aye,” said Wiki, hunting for a note of sadness in her voice but not finding it. She was wearing a plain blue cotton dress with big front pockets in the skirt, a workaday outfit cinched at her waist with a leather belt, but looked breathtakingly lovely. Wiki wondered what would happen if he held out his arms to her, but didn’t quite dare do it, so instead he looked at the sky on the eastern horizon. It threatened a storm, but Forsythe was determined to sail.
He saw Forsythe clambering over the rockfall, his rifle over one shoulder and a sack of flour in the other hand. Then the big Virginian was striding along the beach. Behind him came Robert Festin, carrying the parrot cage in one hand and a molasses keg on his shoulder.
Wiki heard Annabelle’s sucked-in breath. When he looked at her, she was dead white, and was beginning to tremble. Thinking he understood her distress, he said softly, “Don’t be afraid. When you release the bird, Ezekiel’s spirit will fly away, too.”
She made a strange noise, halfway between a sob and a laugh, but said nothing. Taking a boat to the raft, Festin and Forsythe clambered across it and then on board, and Wiki went to meet them as they climbed over the rail.
Robert Festin put down the birdcage, carried the molasses keg to the hatchway by the forward house, and jumped down the ladder to the between-decks space. After he’d stowed the keg Forsythe handed down the sack of flour, and then, as Wiki watched through the aperture of the hatch, Festin stacked it by the bags of stores that had already been loaded.
Looking up at Wiki and beaming broadly, he said, “Pataka, ha?”
Wiki frowned. For some reason the fine hairs on his neck were bristling.
He said, “What do you mean?”
Festin, below him, waved an arm around the between-decks steerage area, and said, “Pataka. Pantry.” Then, still grinning smugly, he mounted the ladder to arrive onto the deck the way Wiki had seen him emerge before, his head first, then his broad shoulders, and his spindly little legs last of all.
Wiki said numbly, “That’s what you call the pantry? The between-decks storage?”
“Pataka pantry, exactly.”
“You were there—between decks—when Captain Reed was killed?”
“Aye. Not the goddamned galley, no.”
“But Alphabet Green…?”
“Ah.” Festin grinned. “In goddamned galley, he.”
“Jesus Christ,” Wiki whispered. “It was you!”
Forsythe said alertly, “What the hell is this?”
“Robert Festin was the man on the quarterdeck!”
“Just quick look,” Festin protested. “To see what crash meant, crash on cabin floor.”
Wiki echoed blankly, “You heard a crash in the cabin?”
“Aye, big bump in the cabin. Me jump up after hatch, have quick look, see Mrs. Reed running, she get to galley, she turn round, I quick back down hatch. Back to pataka, aye.”
“And what did she say before she turned round?”
“To Alphabet Green?”
“Aye.”
In his antique French, Festin said, “Je l’occist!�
�
Wiki shut his eyes, translating Festin’s sixteenth-century language into Annabelle’s more modern tongue, saying to himself, “Je l’ai tué!” He opened them and stated tightly, “‘Je l’ai tué’ is what she really said, isn’t it.”
His face round with surprise, Festin nodded.
Forsythe said, “How the hell do you know that?”
Because, Wiki thought, da Silva had laughed that what she had said had sounded like tu-whit-tu-woo, the call of an owl. Je l’ai tué—I have killed him! That was what Annabelle had gasped to Alphabet Green as she’d run up to the galley door.
Then she had spun around and run back—why?
Something—a sound—warned him, sent the hairs lifting on the back of his neck. Wiki whirled. Annabelle was holding the birdcage over the rail, and shaking it so violently that the parrot fell off its perch. Wiki heard it squawk, and saw it beat its wings in fright.
Forsythe’s voice said again, “What the hell is going on?”
Wiki said numbly, “She did it. She killed her husband. She murdered Ezekiel Reed.”
“She? But that ain’t possible! She’s only a weak woman, goddamn it! The knife went all the way through his chest, you were with me when we saw it!”
“She grabbed the skinning knife and stabbed it into her husband’s back. It didn’t kill him—instead he ran toward the weapons that were hung on the wall, and…” Wiki took a shaking breath, the murder scene vividly in his mind’s eye. Then he said, “She pulled the rug from under his feet.”
“The mat?”
“Aye.” The blood-soaked mat Hammond had used as a winding sheet.
“That was the crash Festin heard,” Wiki shakily went on. “When she pulled the rug from under his feet he fell backward onto the knife, driving it all the way through his chest. Annabelle ran out of the cabin to the galley, calling out to her cousin that she had killed him—and then she realized that she had to roll Reed’s body over so that the knife handle was upward, and so she ran back.”
