The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  Tomaj spun to face Dagny. “We don’t know how many other—”

  There appeared a fresh silhouette in the glassless window, so Tomaj dropped and rolled in time to dodge, by the narrowest of inches so that he could feel and hear its wind, a harrowing fourteen-foot-long bamboo pike, hurled with evil accuracy. That he missed further enraged the Kwangtungman, for, roaring his smelly battle cry, he leapt over the windowsill. From his prone position Tomaj shot him in the face. Caught by the bare feet against the ragged glass of the sill and sprawling facedown, the riceman created a splendid ladder for the next interloper. Tomaj skimmed his empty pistol along the floor to Dagny. She couldn’t possibly know where his shot and powder were, and he didn’t want to call out to her for fear someone might hear him and find her, but it was better than letting a riceman get hold of the pistol.

  Tomaj sprang to yank the long-handled ch’ang-ping tao knife from the belt of the pirate acting as a bridge just as a third yowling riceman hurtled through the gap, catching Tomaj’s jaw with the top of his powerfully kicking foot. Flying through the air so that the details of every candle in the ceiling chandelier sailed by his view, Tomaj landed on his back on a Persian rug, gliding along the polished wooden floor until he banged up against the divan.

  The riceman was upon him with a curdling “Aaaaaaiiiii,” springing into the air wielding a ch’ang-ping tao in each hand, long pigtail standing stiff in the air like a gaff, a black stinking contour of a compact, wiry ladrone only distinguished by the gaping hole of his odiferous mouth.

  Tomaj rolled, but not in time to avoid one of the long knives pinning the right sleeve of his day-shirt to the floorboard. Ripping himself out of the shirt, Tomaj jumped to his feet, swapping cutlass for knife in his hands, but the riceman had elected to leave the knife stuck in the floor, and they both jumped up at once. In the same instant that Tomaj recognized the bald pate and protruding teeth of Wenkai Zhang, Tomaj slashed at the reprobate gentleman of fortune, but Wenkai’s blade blocked his cutlass—he was the flashiest, swiftest evildoer in the South China Sea—and released the block so fast that the same ch’angping tao sank into Tomaj’s side just as Tomaj returned a backhand cut across his face, with astonishingly minor results but to effect a Red Indian slash across his cheekbone.

  Tomaj had trained himself not to waste an instant in alarm at injury, and he lunged forward with his own ch’ang-ping tao to drive it right through the quilting of the jacket into Wenkai’s belly, where it plunged so deeply through the entrails that Tomaj released his grip, leaving it there. Kicking the pirate back toward the divan, he swiped up the forgotten knife stuck to the floorboards and faced his enemy, who merely tottered, unfazed.

  “You pig,” Wenkai snarled in English. If he removed the knife from his belly, the flow of blood would hasten his downfall. “You think you trick me and take the Indiaman prize! Now I come to your waters, to rape you like I raped your loving husband!”

  “Bastard,” growled Tomaj, drawing back his left knife arm just as Wenkai drew his, being one who, unlike Tomaj, favored his left. Tomaj recoiled from the stroke that surely would have cut through to his spine, and Wenkai’s blade swooshed through the air, giving Tomaj the latitude he needed to swing the cutlass in a powerful horizontal stroke that cleaved into the ladrone’s jugular, coming just a sinew away from severing the ugly, snarling head.

  Stormalong, who had heretofore been content to bark at the two dead bodies and Wenkai, bounded forward and knocked the pirate aside. The head sheared from the neck in an almost genteel bounce. The dog winced and dodged the plume of blood that spurted forth, hopping aside in time to avoid the deluge as the body skimmed along the floor, aided by its own lubricious juices, politely avoiding any of Tomaj’s Oriental carpets.

  Tomaj walked to the body. His boots sounded so loud and hollow against the floor, he knew the rencounters in the other rooms were over with, too. “Dagny, stay,” he said wearily, disgusted by the odors emanating from the mangled pile of limbs. With distaste he withdrew the ch’ang-ping tao from between the dead man’s ribs. It was too dark to see accurately anymore, the room being lit now by only one of the menorah candles, but he swiped at the gory mass with the cutlass anyway, slicing away what he believed to be an ear.

  He left it there for another minion to clean, pickle, and ship back to Kwangtung.

  Since Bellingham had been instructed to stand sentry over the Chinese pirates’ bodies, lest someone come back to molest or claim them, Dagny chose to await Tomaj’s return in the reception room. As well, Tomaj’s men dragged at least four dead ricemen into the study from the front of the house, the library serving as a sort of morgue. Dagny had stepped over many bodies cast aside on the sidewalks of New York, and she had no wish to stand guard over more. Men patrolled the grounds, protecting the women who remained inside the house, so she didn’t feel frightened, only curious.

  After tidying up the reception room, Dagny found where Slushy had set out a platter of mangrove oysters and strawberries before being interrupted by the band of odiferous mercenaries, and had fortuitously stocked the sideboard with wine. As all the books were in the study where she didn’t want to tread, the only things to occupy her were the hors d’oeuvres and the cold duck. Once she had consumed that, as well as a goodly quantity of Latour that had not been smashed in the melee, she went in search of the backhouse.

  She found herself in a long, tall hallway draped with paintings that angled downward, hung from chains like saloon art. Some were nautical paintings by that Pocock whom Tomaj admired so much, representations of lively ships, a fleet of East Indiamen in a gale, a view of a battle in Copenhagen from a bird’s perspective.

  “Is that what Tomaj calls a ‘fine double-reefed topsail quartering breeze’?” Dagny wondered aloud, then tittered at her feat of remembrance, not normally having much recollection of things of that nature.

  She fell silent at the next painting.

  Nearly life-sized, a glorious specimen of masculinity posed in the mode of the Angel Gabriel, had Gabriel chosen to distract Mary from his celestial news, and instead send her to her knees with appetites of a more base nature. This man was so stupendous Dagny staggered back until she bumped up against the opposite wall, her hand holding the candlestick lowering until she burned the edge of her basquine.

  “Oh, my.”

  For a moment she thought it a painting of Tomaj, for the delectable flesh of the pectorals and the taut bands of abdominal muscle nearly resembled the beloved count. With upraised arms and hands clasped loosely behind his neck, the lush ruffs of hair in the armpits were inviting, as when Dagny had knelt between Tomaj’s thighs to swallow the delightfully powerful phallus, watching him weave his fingers behind his neck, and throw his head back. The mottled slate blue rock of the backdrop suggested wings.

  The swollen biceps gleamed as if he stood under the bower of a rain forest (indeed, the lighting was similar, diffused from above in an umbrella of heavenly radiance) and his archly dilated nostrils flared with ecstasy, his lidded eyes contemplating a sort of exalted pleasure. The corners of his succulent mouth turned up slightly, begging one to taste of his delicious figure, his pelvis thrust forward brazenly, the long meat of his penis laying dormant, perfectly, between his glistening thighs. And that was when Dagny knew it wasn’t a painting of Tomaj—though surely Tomaj was the artist.

  Someone moved next to her, and Dagny jumped so suddenly she dashed wax, first on the person’s bodice, then on her own. “Oh!”

  It was the concubine Peg who had glowered at her so ferociously on the portico earlier that afternoon. The tiny woman stared just as piercingly at the painting, as if she wanted to shred it with her claws.

  “I’m sorry, it’s …” Dagny sputtered, “it’s a very striking painting.” She didn’t know if Peg could speak English.

  “That is his first quartermaster, Yves!” Peg spat with such vitriol Dagny was surprised phlegm didn’t spray onto the canvas.

  “Yes, I could tell, though he does appear simi
lar to the count.”

  That was perhaps not the correct thing to say, for the woman tore her eyes from the painting and cast Dagny a malevolent sidelong glance, hatred seeping from her nose and ears. “So you would know that the count is not as big, so how can this be the count?” She gestured with a hand as though holding a coconut.

  Dagny tried to laugh, in girlish camaraderie. “Well, yes, I did take note of that, but I thought perhaps artistic license had, ah … enlarged the proportions—”

  “The count is big!” the ramatoa squealed with bulging eyes. “But no man is so big as Yves, that is why the paintings of Yves were wanted the whole world over! Many men paid big money to buy the paintings of Yves!” In fact, the length and breadth of the quartermaster quite put the fear of God into Dagny. If she’d met him in person, she would have had to fend him off with a very long stick, although the imagining of it made her warm and expansive inside. “The count loved Yves much greater than he can ever love your brother, who is small!”

  “My good woman,” said Dagny stiffly, miffed at the mention of her brother. Had the slattern been practicing some fady? “I’m not suggesting that the count loves my brother at all. I’m merely looking for the … for the tráno fandròna.”

  Smiling complacently, Dagny turned to continue down the hall. Holy Eleanora Brown appeared as a silhouette at the other end, rushing for Peg and embracing her.

  “I… sorry, Mademoiselle,” she bleated. “Peg, her head no right. She been playing tromba.”

  “They kissed, and ate! They loved together!” bellowed Peg. “They burnt, they froze, they starved!”

  “Well,” smiled Dagny. “That sounds very pleasant. Good night, ladies.”

  But by the time she discovered the necessary, and perched over it with lifted skirts, she was so rigid from the odd encounter she could scarcely piss.

  Back in the reception room where no ramatoa dared venture, Dagny poured another glass of Latour and gazed at the drawing Tomaj’s mother had made of him as a child in New York. She wished to go embrace Bellingham, to tell him that Tomaj intended to be a better father to him from now on, but the thought of those corpses put her in a brown study. She could perhaps go upstairs and discover Tomaj’s bedchamber and there gain some thankful carus.

  She found it unnerving that here in the Indian Ocean he’d evidently reconstructed a replica of the New Orleans plantation house that had been burned, attempting to do over a life led unwisely.

  “It burned, yet he saved this drawing, and that Jewish candelabrum,” she mused aloud.

  At length she moved to the settee where she’d sat the day Tomaj had pulled her from the drink. Silk pillows adorned the settee, so she slipped off her shoes and lay back, the glass of wine balanced on her belly. She fell asleep with her fingers trailing in a plate of slimy duck.

  “Rouse and shine, lubbers!”

  “Show a leg!”

  Tomaj, Youx, Zaleski, and Broadhecker bellowed victoriously in the vestibule, Tomaj kicking a riceman’s conical hat out of his way. Pleased that his instructions not to touch anything had been followed, he allowed Ellie to take his cutlass and scabbard, while Moll took away one of his pistols for cleaning, the other remaining on him at all times. Smit, as carpenter the next best thing to a ship’s surgeon, had bandaged the flesh wound in his side when aboard the Bombay Oyster.

  “Is Miss Ravenhurst still here?” Tomaj asked Ellie. She nodded in the direction of the reception room. He shouted, “Bellingham, forward, if you please!”

  As the men fell into drawing room chairs and accepted glasses of champagne from the women, Bellingham skittered around the corner, sliding on his stocking feet.

  “All’s well, then?” Tomaj grabbed a champagne glass from Sue and shoved it at Bellingham. “Wenkai didn’t wake you in the middle of the night with his snoring?”

  The boy scoffed into his glass of champagne, blowing bubbles. One side of his face was coated with ash, as though he’d slept atop a spittoon. “Not likely, Cap’n. It were just a bit frightening when the louses and weevils crawled from his ears and mouth and commenced marching up my leg.”

  All the men burst into a round of laughter, causing Bellingham to brighten. “It went devilish good, then?”

  “I should say!” Tomaj was too hot to sit, so he paced grandly across the marble floor. “We chased that painted wreck of a junk all the way from Mavasarona—we took the Bombay Oyster, as you know she draws little water, so she can stand among the reefs at night, and we had that native pilot from Foulpointe who can make out sea horses in the dark—and at first it was quite harrowing, not having had time to work up a crew properly. But of course we, being in our home waters, had the advantage, so we were soon racing away with fresh breeze on our larboard quarter.”

  Bellingham’s eyes shone. “Aye, but the glass dropped at three bells, so I went to the window—”

  “Minding the broken windowglass,” Zaleski stuck his oar in, irritating Tomaj, for he was the one who should have instructed the boy.

  “Minding the broken windowglass,” Bellingham agreed, “and the wind had just shifted aback south-southwest. I reckoned by that time you’d gained the Île Sainte-Marie—”

  “By my ancestors!” Tomaj marveled. “How’d you know, boy?”

  Tomaj was gratified that Dagny at last deigned to show her head round the corner of the archway. She looked worse for the wear, with a wine stain on her lap and what looked to be an oyster plastered to her wrist. “At three bells, exactly, we were raising Cape Deadman where we spied the junk’s sails—”

  “The same as the one what choused us in the Straits of Malacca?” Bellingham demanded. He referred to the vessel where Tomaj had lost a finger, and his great consort Yves his nose and life. “With the bats on the pennant?”

  “No, that one wasn’t suited for open waters. This one gained the impression of a fine steady ship, with fresh sails of bamboo matting, which gives me further grouse with those Frogs at Sainte-Marie, if they were the ones allowing them to take refuge and careen there.”

  “Interesting birds painted on the stern,” Broadhecker observed in his bland way, inspecting a fried duck’s foot.

  “Aye? And who was commander, with Wenkai Zhang and Panjoo dead as dodos by your hand in your study, sir?”

  Tomaj swelled with pride that Bellingham made mention of that. As it turned out, Panjoo was the ladrone who had hurled the spear into Tomaj’s library, and later acted as a bridge.

  Tomaj couldn’t resist a glance at Dagny, who had sidled along a wall and sipped at champagne while casting him low, dark looks that he imagined were sultry. She did look fine in the morning, where most gals woke with pasty faces and mottled skin. Dagny glowed, her face framed with satiny curls that had come undone from her Apollo knot. He thought of her hair ribbon, on the study carpet crushed by shattered glass and ossified riceman limbs. “Why, none other than the Barber Pirate, Chia-chi Cheng.”

  Bellingham pointed with his empty champagne glass. “The cove with the tattoo of the two big eyes!”

  “So that whales might take him for another whale and not eat him,” Zaleski inserted.

  “Wenkai’s old head man, right. Well, he was standing northeast with the trade wind on his beam, so we set course to come up athwart her hawse, and …” Tomaj shrugged casually, as though this sort of thing happened every day, which it sometimes did. “Raked her bow with a broadside.” He paused for effect. “Took out her foremast and at least three of her guns.”

  Bellingham, too, paused the appropriately polite amount of time to marvel. The other men nonchalantly inspected their champagne glasses and fingernails for signs of mold. A morning shrike creearcked out in the garden.

  Zaleski broke the laudatory silence. “Though the train tackle on the starboard chaser busted, sending old Erich Planét flying hell-bent knocking over Stephen Miller.”

  Broadhecker waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, we didn’t even need those lubberly Oysters. We could’ve smoked that junk with just the hands in t
his room.”

  Zaleski pointed at Broadhecker. “Gave Miller a knock like a belaying pin, what with that hard head of Planét’s. Miller’ll be piping his eye with a sick headache for weeks to come, mark my words!”

  “He claimed the gun was hanging fire,” scoffed Broadhecker.

  Youx inserted, “Planét told me ‘twas a sudden overfall in the surf—”

  Rolling his eyes, Tomaj longed to get back to the narrative. He smiled at Dagny and headed for the bottle of champagne to refill her glass. The marrow in his bones curdled at her sudden outburst.

  “Pirates.”

  Slowly standing erect, Tomaj swiveled to face her. “Yes, my malala. Chinese pirates.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she bounced herself off the wall to approach him. “No. I mean you are pirates. Paul Boneaux was right. You are freebooters, pirates, whatever you want to call it. That’s why Paul despises you so.”

  Tomaj didn’t know what to say. He’d imagined other helpful residents of the island had apprised Dagny of the exact nature of his business. It just wasn’t a topic that most citizens dwelled upon too much. He was the Nefarious King of the Betsimisaraka, he ruled the coastal trade, and everyone was supremely happy. “Well, yes. We all went on account decades ago.” He put down the champagne bottle. “I thought you were aware of that.”

  “Then why would a Chinese pirate be smashing through your library window? If you had a letter of marque at least, which I know they don’t issue anymore, you’d be within the law, and he’d be afraid to retaliate against whatever you did to him. But he knew you’re a pirate, and have no backing of any government!”

  “Well.” Tomaj shrugged. “He wasn’t precisely here to traipse through my flower beds, no. As for ‘whatever I did to him,’ I like to think it was more along the lines of ‘whatever he did to me.’”

  “You’re nothing but a bashi-bazouk!”

  They glared at each other, their lower lips stubborn, until Zaleski leapt to his feet efficaciously, proclaiming, “Mademoiselle, have you not heard of the stage play written about Balásházy and his crew? No?”