I could utter no word but I bent my weary head in reply.
How many days and nights, I shall never know. One day he lifted a hand, heavy as lead at the end of his fleshless arm and pointed. She whispered: ‘A ship!’
How they together mustered strength to make signals, I don’t know. I, with my smaller strength, perhaps with my lesser will, lay little more than half conscious on that broad seat in the stern which had been my kennel for so many, many hideous hours. But some signal was given: far, far off on the horizon, the ship was altering course, turning to approach us. Exhausted by this last one great effort, he fell into a sort of stupor, only gazing steadily ahead to where salvation approached at last.
The salvation of the body.
She left him there. Dragging herself along the bottom of the boat, she made her way to me. She caught at my skeleton hand as he had done. She got out two words. ‘Don’t—tell!’
He had prayed to me to save his soul. I stared ahead speechless, gazing out over the intolerable ever moving, moving, moving grey-green sea. She knelt at my feet, she made, feebly, the sign of the cross upon her breast; fumbled at her bosom, drew out the gold cross she wore about her neck—her cracked lips kissed it. She held it out to me, still on its chain about her neck. She seemed to plead, wordlessly: ‘Have mercy!’
For her sake, he had robbed me of his body and the heart within his body; for her sake he had robbed his Maker of his soul. He had murdered two men and sent them to God with all their sins upon them; with her, had sent to their deaths seven men in all. These sins must be expiated here on earth, lest they bring a terrible retribution in the world to come. I gave no sign.
I saw the desperation in her eyes. The dry lips moved but seemed able to make no more sound. She placed her thin, shaking hand against her breast with a gesture of repudiation, with the other hand pointed to where he lay huddled in his exhaustion in the prow of the boat. The motion said: ‘Not for my sake. For his!’
But it was for his sake that I must do my duty. He had come to me, he had prayed to me to save him; it had never been my intention to do less. To save him from eternal damnation, he must pay an earthly price for his sins. For the first time I made some acknowledgement. I shook my head.
Her whole being seemed to lift, to grow strong again, her bright eyes to grow more brilliant, the sap to return to her veins with the huge force and courage of a final determination. She rose to her full height, stood balanced there with all the old, flaunting magnificence of strength and vitality: looked down at me for one brief moment and then swooped, caught me by the arms, jerked me to my feet and with one swift movement thrust me towards the gunwale of the boat.
Alive and alert, I should perhaps have been easier prey. But in her emaciated arms, my weight was the dead weight of my helplessness. I slumped in her hold and she had not strength to jerk me again to my feet and as she struggled to raise me, he was upon us, lurching towards us down the length of the rocking yawl. And he had hauled her off me, thrown me back into my corner, was struggling with her as she tried to fling herself again upon me and with her tigress teeth and claws rip me into silence if no other way would serve. I staggered up, tottered towards where now they wrestled, he fighting for her subjugation, she to break free and attack me again—and feebly tried to drag her off him. She released her hold for a moment and with her free hand gave me a shove which, weak as it may have been, in my condition was enough to send me toppling back against the side of the boat. The release of my hampering weight flung them, still locked together, to the opposite side; the yawl rocked violently and, without so much as a scream or a cry, in a terrible silence they had vanished from my sight.
He could have saved himself perhaps; but her strength was spent, she clung like a dead weight about him. Instead of the cross, The Albatross about his neck was hung… They threshed in the water, sank beneath its churned surface, came up again with streaming hair and gaping mouths; sank again.
With one hand grasping the gunwale, I leaned far out and stretched my hand to him. For the second time, he came up again. She lay across his arm, her own hanging lax in the water. His eyes were closed, his mouth gaped open; he was near to death. My own scream was like the rattle of death indeed, as I leaned ever further over, dangerously tilting the boat, reaching out my hand to him.
He opened his eyes. He looked full at me, flung up his hand and for a dying moment held it high. The light glittered cold on the gold of Mary Sellers’ cross.
When I knew consciousness again, they were gone and I clutched fast in my hand this cross that now hangs with the worn black crucifix, at the end of my rosary.
With God in his hand, he died—doing penance for his sins. With God in my hand, I have lived—and done penance also for his sins. God have mercy upon him… Lord have mercy upon him… Into Thy hands, oh Lord, I commend his spirit…
They found me alone in the drifting yawl, with this cross in my hand, bearing her name. They brought me to this place and I was nursed back to life. They gave me her name and, since I carried a cross, what I suppose might have been her religion: in mine we had no room for golden idols. What did it matter?—under any form, one may worship the one, true and living God. I feigned ignorance of my whole past; there were wrecks enough at sea for there to be no suspicion that a woman bearing a name unconnected with the brig found abandoned many miles distant, could have anything to do with the mystery. The yawl, if she had any name painted upon her stern, still discernible, had at least none approximating to the name of the Mary Celeste; and as I have said, in this remote place, far, far from Gibraltar where enquiries were going forward, communications would be slow or exist not at all. As Mary Sellers, I allowed them to do what they would with me: took their veil, vowed their vows, adopted their way of life—what did it all matter?—all I needed was peace and a place to do penance for his sins.
The lecturer is talking some nonsense about insurance, about a meeting, a conversation at any rate, having taken place before ever they sailed from New York, between Captain Briggs of the Mary Celeste and Morehouse of the Dei Gratia; about a plot between them, the abandonment of the brig with her cargo in furtherance of a claim for insurance—some fraudulent trick that I don’t understand. I say nothing, waiting for the novices to wheel me away to the seclusion of my cell; watching my own gnarled hands play with the gold cross at the end of my rosary. Let him jabber on, poor fool! What does he know about it? My husband—lend himself to knavery of that sort! Captain Benjamin Briggs, I’ll have you know, my dear sir—for all the sins of the flesh was in the depths of his soul a God-fearing man.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1978 by Christianna Brand
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
ISBN 978-1-4532-9046-0
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