Silver

by Andrew Motion

  This made it all the more astonishing that his first gesture toward Natty was one of kindness. He patted Stone on the arm to show he had heard enough, then slipped off the veranda of the log house (staggered would be better, since he was still very unsteady on his feet) and with a great deal of groaning knelt down beside Natty to undo the rope that tied her.

  “Well, well,” were his first words, spoken close to her face. Like everything he said, they sounded wet, as though there were always too much saliva in his mouth. “Mr. Stone told me he’d caught a pretty one, and a pretty one you are, no mistake.” His breath was so rancid, it was as much as Natty could do not to flinch away; but she was determined to keep her eyes fixed on his, to show she was not afraid. “An exceedingly pretty one,” he went on admiringly, lingering over Natty with the same greed that Stone and Jinks had shown. “Exceedingly pretty. Not quite a girl and not quite a boy by the look of you: a very strange bird. Or is this the way of the world, nowadays? I have precious little knowledge of the world, you know. Precious little. And precious little regard for it either.” He narrowed his eyes as he said this, breathing deeply and apparently inhaling the scent of her skin. “And what’s this?” he continued after a pause, which he filled with soft grunts and sighs. “A smudge of brown as well as a smudge of white? Very choice. You’ll be at home here, my lad; you’ll be at home here all right. None of us cares who we are or what we do.”

  Natty felt so disgusted by Smirke’s closeness, and by the insult and insinuation of his words, it was almost impossible for her to stay silent—as she knew she must. But just when it seemed he would become intolerable, he suddenly lurched away, hauling himself to his feet and looking down at her with his hands thrust into the tops of his trousers. “But we can come to all that in our own good time,” he said. “Time is the one thing we’ve got plenty of, isn’t that so, shipmates?” He leered at Stone as he said this, showing more of his ruined teeth, then continued—apparently speaking to all and sundry, but with the dreaminess of a man talking to himself.

  “First things first is what I always say. First things first. So let’s begin with the first of all. What shall we call you? I wonder. Shall we just call you English? Mr. Stone tells me you come from the old country, and I would like to revenge myself on her. Or do you have a name of your own?”

  Threatened like this, Natty felt there would be no harm in telling the truth, though her throat was so dry, her voice squeezed out sounding very pinched.

  “Nat.”

  “Nat,” Smirke repeated with a mocking fondness. “Nat with a thirst, by the sound of it. Mr. Stone! Fetch the lad a drink, if you would be so kind, and we can hear how he pipes.”

  Stone did as he was told, which again seemed remarkable, by filling a tankard at the spring, carrying it carefully, and pressing it into Natty’s hands and staring as though he had never seen a person drink before.

  Natty almost choked as she swallowed, and swallowed again, thinking she was like a calf being fattened for the slaughter that must follow—and perhaps would have come very soon, if a distraction had not interrupted them. This was Jinks flinging open the prisoners’ door, and ordering his charges to appear—which they did immediately, and formed into a column two abreast.

  After the first few pairs had emerged, Stone backed away from Natty, ripping the tankard from her and throwing it onto the ground as Smirke bellowed, “Look lively, men! Look lively!” A great commotion then began in the pirates’ own cabin. This was the sound of bodies falling out of bed, cursing as they searched for clothes they had mislaid, complaining about their headaches, snatching a mouthful of food and water—then stumbling into the bright yard. The majority stood still and gaped—first at Natty, then at one another—but this rigmarole was soon ended by Smirke barking orders. At this, two or three of the men broke away and lolloped toward the prisoners like wolves discovering a flock of sheep.

  The prisoners seemed to shiver as these guards approached, but not one of them faltered or looked up, their dejection was so great. There were some fifty of them, men first, women following, and every one stooped and ashamed, with dull eyes fixed on the shoulders of the one before. All were naked to the waist, all were barefoot, and some of the last to emerge carried young children, or led them by the hands. The paler skin of these children showed their parentage; several, in fact, had hair as yellow as the sun, and one a tangle of red ringlets which reached halfway down his back. Everyone—child and adult—held either a shovel, or a mattock, or a fork, or some other implement in their unbound hands; only their ankles were tied together—with lengths of rope that made it easy enough to walk, but impossible to run.

  Natty soon found Scotland among them, shuffling with the same cowed meekness as the rest so as not to invite attention. He refused to look toward Natty—although it comforted her a little to notice how the blows inflicted on him by Jinks, and the dozens of stabs and cuts delivered by Stone, had been cleaned since he had been thrown back to join his friends, and the blood on him wiped away.

  Natty understood that she was watching a daily ritual, which Smirke and the others were also now closely scrutinizing, eager to reprimand anyone who strayed from routine. Still in line, the prisoners approached the stream that ran toward the edge of the stockade. In pairs they knelt to drink and, when they had swallowed a few mouthfuls, rose and stepped across, allowing those behind them to do the same. When the last had taken their refreshment—which was never enough, and to the children was especially miserable (many of them began weeping)—those at the head of the column had reached the southern gate. From here they passed into the fields they had made, which were already shimmering in the heat.

  As each pair of prisoners left the stockade they began to sing—a slow-paced song Natty did not recognize:

  In the morning with the dew upon the field

  Alleluia!

  We will rise and find our injuries are healed

  Alleluia!

  We will greet the rising sun

  As if a new world has begun

  We will do our Saviour’s work and never yield.

  Eventually the troop was in full voice, swaying gently from side to side as they went, with the children now drying their eyes, and beginning to clap their hands. It was a most affecting sound, very beautiful in its sorrow, but at the same time full of dignity and defiance. Until they began to drop out of sight toward the shore, their music really seemed to fill the sky and cancel its emptiness.

  When the song ended, which happened as the prisoners set to work, this emptiness returned, but now seemed larger, just as the misery of the prisoners’ plight also seemed more engulfing. Plans that Natty had spoken about with Scotland—plans that had seemed so easily achieved when they were nothing but words—now felt impossible as she saw them translated into facts. Fifty friends, all of whom had shovels and suchlike to use as weapons, and thirteen enemies. Their uprising must surely succeed! Yet so broken were the prisoners, and so completely demoralizing was the thought of sticks against swords, the battle seemed lost before it had begun. Natty had imagined a second storming of the Bastille. On Treasure Island, such a thing was impossible. Here was the old world still, stupid and brutal as ever.

  Smirke saw nothing of this as it passed through Natty’s mind—nor much of anything except his latest chance for cruelty: the prisoners were so familiar to him, they had no individual selves. In fact all the pirates seemed so completely used to their own barbarity, Natty asked herself whether they might in fact prefer not to be rescued from the island, no matter how much they might say they missed England and her weather.

  From this, Natty deduced that Smirke’s comfort, if that is quite the word for such a diminished state of being, was so enormous, he could not be bothered to cut off her head. In this respect, she understood that he was filled with the same vanity as Stone. And once again, while being astonished by the lethargy it produced, she also felt a profound gratitude for it. Smirke was so convinced of his authority, so blinded by his habits of
domination, he was not merely reluctant to search for the ship that had brought her to the island—he could barely stir himself even to consider the likelihood that it would have a crew opposed to his way of managing his affairs.

  At the same time, it was quite natural for him to be very suspicious of Natty, and once he had finished his perusal of the slaves, he therefore began a bullying and laborious sort of interrogation. How many others had come with her to the island? Where was their ship if it had survived the coast? Were they here by accident or design? In the beginning, these questions were delivered with the same false kindness that Stone had shown in passing her the tankard of water. But the longer they continued, and the less helpful Natty became, the better she understood that he was not in fact expecting answers at all. He was performing a brutal charade that, thanks to his sense of invincibility, had nothing to do with a real curiosity about Natty’s friends or the Nightingale. Instead, he was looking for ways to terrify her. It was for this reason and no other that he eventually grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her across the yard until they stood in front of the Fo’c’sle Court.

  “You know what this is, do you?” As Smirke hissed this into Natty’s ear, he gave it a painful tweak.

  She shook her head, which made Smirke continue even more fiercely. “Very well,” he said, widening his eyes. “I shall tell you what this is. It is our court, here on the island. Our court, where we see justice done. We are a reasonable society. We arrest, and we try, and we punish. And we’ve arrested you, haven’t we, Master Nat? We’ve arrested you, and now we’ll try you and punish you.”

  He paused again—but when Natty stayed silent, decided he might as well lose control of himself. “Still tongue-tied?” he spat, looking around at Stone for encouragement then lunging wildly toward Natty again, with the tufts of gray beard wagging on his face. “By God, I’ll shake you up, you miserable dog. We’ll shake him, won’t we, Mr. Stone, we’ll shake him until his bones melt. I don’t care if he is no more than a boy—a boy’s as insolent as a man, more insolent in fact. Much worse. Much more insolent. Where’s your respect, boy, where’s your respect? Ha! What are boys and men to me, they’re all the same. A babe in arms or a doddering fool, they’re all the same. I’ll chop them up and fry them if I want—they’re all nothing.”

  Natty heard this with her head bowed, as though the words were blows, but when they ended and she looked up again, and saw the court arching above her, she knew that everything she had heard was the simple truth as Smirke understood it. The shock jolted her into speech.

  “I have lost my friends,” she said, which made him gaze at her in utter bewilderment, as though she were an idiot.

  “Have you not understood me, young man?” It was the strangled voice of a schoolmaster that Natty heard, and a schoolmaster’s snatching hand that grabbed her chin, and pinched her face. “This is our courthouse. Our courthouse, where we hold our assizes and punish all liars and other wretches. This is where we see fair play. Where we set everything right.” He released Natty, and bent close to her again. “You see that, boy? If you see that, you will answer my questions and our justice won’t trouble you. Otherwise …” He did not complete the sentence, but straightened and wiped his chin, to clear the saliva he had ejected there.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Natty told him, which was truth of a kind but really none at all.

  “You don’t know what to say?” Smirke repeated, much more quietly now, as if he were suddenly exhausted. In truth, he had remembered another way to enjoy himself with her. “By my reckoning,” he continued, “you need to look sharp and make it your trouble to know, if you want to keep your head on your shoulders.”

  With this, he pushed back the sleeves of his jacket, in a gesture Natty thought must be the prelude to his drawing a sword. But no. Rather than that, he proceeded to wrap his arms around her and lift her up as if she weighed no more than an infant, and then to carry her in the same upright position until he reached the dock of the court, where he installed her like a peg in a hole. In this strange embrace, the fear that rose in Natty was continually checked by the foul smell of dampness, and rotten flesh, that rose from Smirke and filled her head to the exclusion of almost every other thing.

  “This is where not knowing will land you,” he said as he released her. “You will stand here”—he jabbed at her with his finger—“and I shall sit there”—he pointed at the chair raised on its platform behind her—“and Mr. Jinks will be here”—he stabbed the air close to her head—“and Mr. Stone will be waiting here, in case we think you are guilty.” As he said this last phrase, he indicated the stained ground on which he stood, and scuffled his feet as if he were trying to color his shoes with blood.

  The performance was so bold, Natty insists she found it more farcical than anything, and actually had to resist a compulsion to smile. I have since told her this was merely an aspect of her fear, and nothing to be surprised at. Yet she was right in thinking Smirke was not about to put an end to her. He was enjoying himself too much for that, like a cat with its mouse. After frowning at her for a moment in her new place, and finding this still did not loosen her tongue, his hand went nowhere near his sword but only flew back to his tufts of beard again, from which he wiped the spittle and sweat a second time.

  This scowling gradually became a long grumble, delivered more to himself than Natty, about the growing warmth of the sun, and the impossibility of working any more, and the need for Natty to “consider her fate” and suchlike. From this, Natty understood that her silence had won her a victory of a kind: it allowed Smirke to remain convinced that not even a whole army of her friends would be capable of organizing an attack on his camp. In this respect at least, she silently gave thanks for his degradation, which allowed him to remain complacent about the extent of his own power on the island.

  At the same time, Natty understood the balance of his mind might very easily swing in a different direction. So when Smirke eventually turned his back and ordered Stone to put her in the distillery, she complied with the order in a way that must have seemed close to grateful. She followed across the compound without a word. As the door of the distillery closed behind her, and the key turned in the lock, and the smothering reek of the place wrapped around her like a cloth, she actually mouthed, “Thank you” into the darkness.

  22

  The Ravine

  WHEN I WAS a child helping my father in the Hispaniola, I very often saw men made drunk by the fumes of their grog, as well as by grog itself. Natty had found the same in the Spyglass; it is a common enough sight. Now she herself became like one of those topers. The distillery might not have been visited for several hours, and the barrel that was the climax of the operation might have been only half full—but every part of it smelled so strong, it quickly made her feel intoxicated. For this reason, you might say she began her captivity by seeming to celebrate.

  Perhaps this was all for the good, since it allowed her the drunkard’s opportunity of taking an excessive interest in matters that deserve only a moment’s attention. Bars of sunlight, slanting between the planks of the walls, soon became objects of great sentimental interest as they illuminated the dust in the air, and turned it into a stairway for miniature angels. The scratching of birds’ feet along the roof created a melody as fascinating as the music of the spheres.

  At the same time, in the familiar paradox of drunkenness, Natty felt liberated from immediate circumstances, and able to concentrate instead on remote figures and places. Her father, for instance, whom she saw on his bed overlooking the River Thames as clearly as if she were lying beside him; when she pressed the hard ground on which she was sitting, she might have been touching the bones of his hand. She assures me that I also appeared to her, and by looking closely into her eyes showed how much I wanted her safe return. From this I conclude that she welcomed the thought of me—which, had I known it at the time, would have consoled me more than I felt able to comfort her.

  Such dreams, alas, we
re never solid enough to occupy Natty for more than a few moments. Fear continually dragged her back to the present—fear stoked by the sound of the pirates’ voices, which reached her through the wall of the shack that was also the wall of their hut. Every word of their conversation was audible, and its subject was mainly herself.

  Smirke had begun talking the moment he went in through the door: Natty heard the clump of his boots across the wooden floor, then a terrific creak as he hurled himself onto a bed; the rest arranged themselves more gently.

  “What kind of scrape have you got us into here, you swab?” he growled.

  Natty understood this to mean that she was the scrape and Stone was the swab—which hardly seemed fair, despite her loathing of him. Stone, to her surprise, seemed almost contrite.

  “I wish it had never happened, Captain. Just a lad. But a dangerous lad, seeing we don’t know what comes along with him.”

  “Give me the word and I’ll tear out his tongue. That will make it start wagging soon enough.” This was a voice Natty did not recognize—perhaps another guard off the Achilles, who had stayed behind when Jinks and the other men left to oversee the prisoners at work.

  “If we tear out his tongue,” replied Smirke, in a sarcastic parody of reason, “how shall we ever hear what we want?”

  This produced a burst of laughter, and a babble of voices all talking together, wondering quite what they did want, and whether it need involve words. Smirke stamped his foot to silence them.

  “Quiet, you dogs. Quiet, and use your heads. There’s a question we must consider. A whole heap of questions in fact, and I’ll now proceed to lay them out for you, along with the answers. One: is the boy alone? I’ll wager not. Two: who comes along with him? I’ll wager a party. Three: what sort of party? I’ll wager a party with weapons. Four: what will they want of us?” Here Smirke paused, and Natty imagined him widening his eyes to solicit opinions—for rather than continuing with his own next “wager,” there was a sudden outburst.