The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  The bearers jogged within reach of the front portico of Barataria. Tomaj, forewarned by shrieking ramatoas who fled into the house in response to the warning shouts of the bearers, strode onto the portico in a dressing gown, a towel around his neck, his obscenely long locks dripping water. Slushy tumbled from the filanzana and staggered forward.

  Tomaj took one step down and regarded the chef askance. “Broadhecker has returned?” he surmised.

  “Aye, Captain,” Slushy panted.

  Slowly, as though he slept where he stood, Tomaj took the folded pennant from Slushy. Tomaj let it unfurl from his fingers. There was the red sun, and embraced by a glowering dog-dragon was T’ien-hou, the Sea goddess, resembling a lecherous man, though Slushy knew she was supposed to be the calmer of storms and protector of merchant ships.

  “Höllenfeuer und Verdammung,” sighed the captain. “I have so many enemies.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE FLAG OF THE MYTHICAL SEA GODDESS

  IT WAS PERHAPS BROUGHT ON BY THE SWEETGRASS TEA she’d drunk before slumbering (the better to fend off any potential ghost sickness), but Dagny was beset by reveries of Tomaj.

  He appeared so real she imagined she could smell the musty library aroma that came from afyuni—odd, she thought he’d refrained from smoking that lately. Tomaj regarded her gently, his gemmy eyes glowing with the warmth of a panther, the fertility medal Radama had given him gleaming against his bare chest.

  “Dagny Edvarda,” said Tomaj’s hallucination. “Look for the flag of the mythical sea goddess. I’ll find you there.”

  What in … “Hector? Are you awake?”

  “Aye, miss.”

  “What does this mean? ‘Look for the flag of the mythical sea goddess.’”

  “Sea goddess? Well, in ricemen lore there’s a sea goddess, T’ien-hou. She calms storms and protects ships, and they sometimes paint her onto their pennants.”

  Since that didn’t help solve the quandary, Dagny dismissed it. Maybe Sal had put afyuni into the sweetgrass tea. “Who was the captain’s first wife?”

  She expected the lengthy pause that ensued.

  Perhaps not quite this long, though.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Aye, miss.”

  “Call me Dagny. You’re my co-exhibitor at Pamplemousses.”

  She felt the smile in his voice. “Dagny.” A shorter pause. “He won’t like me to talk about it, he won’t. He gets rather irritated if anyone dares bring it up, which no one has for the past ten years.”

  Dagny rolled over to face the youth. “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “Oh, buried, I expect, over on Grand Terre in Louisiana.”

  “Ah, so he’s a widower.”

  “What’s a widderer?”

  “Someone whose wife is dead.”

  “Oh, a widderer. Aye, he’s that. That’s why he don’t have no figurehead of a devilish good piece like most has got, and instead has got a dog—he don’t like to think about it.” Hector fell silent after such a garrulous speech. At length he could not resist adding, “I don’t think she were no buttock and tongue, from what Youx’s told me.”

  “Buttock and tongue?”

  “A wife what scolds. Rather, she were a right ewe, but not—’course—as beautiful as you. Dagny.”

  Dagny sighed. “That’s all right, Hector. Now you must sleep, for we’ll be lucky to get into a light sopor what with these miners letting off steam so loudly.” They were encamped on a hillock overlooking the mine, where workers set their lungs to wailing shanties that would put a ship of pirates to shame, clanging their iron buckets, and hurling great boulders at each other. Unlike many others of the corvée labor crews as Paul utilized in Mantasoa, Tomaj paid his men a good wage, so they were more enthusiastic than most.

  A dead wife. In New Orleans.

  Dagny supposed that was only to be expected. A man, especially one as skilled and elegant as Tomaj, did not reach the grand age of thirty and eight without having been loved.

  And the wife is dead, thought Dagny. There’s that to be said for her.

  That was her last happy thought for a long time.

  Someone was strangling her.

  A heavy brick of weight was on her back, and hands encircled her throat, choking her so that her eyes popped and bulged. Her elbow jammed the assailant in the ribs, releasing the hands from her throat. Dagny twirled to her feet, one hand on the pistol she always slept with. Was it Malagasy, vazaha, what was it?

  Before she could cock the hammer, the enemy was on her again. He went for her throat with outspread hands, slamming her head against a tree. His face was Asian, but unlike most of the Malay people of the island, he had sharp cheekbones and thin lips that drew back over rotting teeth. Who was this bastard? Dagny’s knee slammed into his twiddle-diddles, giving her a moment to leap aside and grab Hector.

  Hector’s bed was empty.

  She got the hammer to half-cock when the assailant pressed an odd knife against her neck, digging his fingers into her wrist while oozing oaths in a foreign language, causing her to drop the pistol.

  If she moved one inch, he would slice her.

  Commotion everywhere, down at the mine. Men ran in all directions, yelling, shooting. Where was Hector? Where was Sal?

  They’re ricemen, Dagny thought, as the man effortlessly flipped her onto her back, the knife at her throat. Tomaj told us not to come here. Perhaps this is why …

  Her limbs went slack, so that she could think and gain advantage. The thin wiry riceman lay heavy on her, one hand pressing the knife and the other fumbling with her skirts. He reeked like a concoction of patchouli and dung. If she could only …

  Catch him off guard.

  He had his little prick out, like a short and stiff stick jabbing at her thighs. Her skirts were up, so her legs were free. She could knee him again, or …

  She wrenched the knife from his hand, and plunged it into his back.

  It went through a few layers of what felt like upholstered fabric and, she judged, about two inches into his flesh. Dagny worked with her weaker left hand, but it went in deep enough to make him roar and rear back off her.

  Leaving the knife sticking from the riceman, Dagny kneed the man away. In one motion, bending down to grab her pistol, she was already halfway to the mine, through undergrowth of small palms and ferns that whacked at her arms. Down in the pit, men slashed and cut each other, rolling in balls of thrashing limbs. Ricemen picked off miners with ancient seven-foot-long blunderbusses Dagny had not seen the like of in a decade. Miners fumbled with their pistols—Dagny saw at least two pirates blasted away by Malagasy miners.

  One such dead pirate was slammed against the opening of the mine, spraying blood, skin, and bluish innards against the rock wall. He keeled before the opening to the mine where workers had stacked a citadel of rock buckets. Dagny raced toward the body, leaping over it. Should I shoot someone?

  She cocked the hammer as she cleared the mouth of the cave, toppling the buckets but still on her feet. Twirling, she didn’t know who to shoot. Both factions of men were equally as adept at killing each other.

  Then, a black silhouette, a wooden cutout of a black crow hovering over a cornfield. That rapacious riceman chased her.

  She blasted his chest while black boulders fell from the roof of the cave. The dead riceman fell atop her, clutching at her shoulder. The boom of the shot reverberated inside the tunnel. Her head smacked against a rock, her arm flung over her head, and for a long time, there was silence.

  Tomaj selected Stormalong instead of the Oyster, as she’d recently been refitted with the newer carronades. Not that it looked as though there’d be much use for them, judging from Broadhecker’s report.

  The junk had evidently remasted with the assistance of the friendly Frogs in the Île Sainte-Marie, but it was the usual yangch’uan ocean-going junk with guns that were mounted by a rope rove through a hole in the gunwale and made fast to the muzzle of the gun, stationery rigs with no
train tackle to allow room for reloading. Since most could not be maneuvered at all, the Kwangtungmen were compelled to position their junks with the enemy in their sights. By the time Broadhecker had hove into view and let loose with his bow guns, mauling the junk square amidships, the best the junkmen could do was elevate their guns. These were guns of the roughly cast pai-tzu turtledove type, badly made and smelted from scrap iron, so disgracefully inaccurate the junk was only able to get off a volley of nails and iron pot fragments that roundly hit a mark—a gaggle of ducks in the center of the bay.

  Tomaj was in luck with a good top-gallant-sail breeze, conning the vessel from his post by the larboard rail of the quarterdeck. In half an hour’s time, they’d be standing into the Bay of Antongil, and they had a couple of capable local pilots to guide them through the intricacies of the coral reefs. Stormalong paced with her ears tipped forward as she peered through the rail. The big dog took her lifesaving job seriously—she did not play until the anchor was a-cockbill, and then she bounded about as though hoping someone would lose his footing and fall into the drink.

  Ignorant that he wasn’t allowed, Zeke entered the quarterdeck. He’d abandoned the stiff Quaker attire—there was some nonsensical talk that Monsieur Boneaux had made off with his rig. Now Zeke attempted to adopt the style he imagined a landlord should affect, and he’d even approached Tomaj to beg for Wellingtons large enough to not crush his feet.

  “Count. Might I suggest that after—well, after we return to Mavasarona Bay, that is, all safe as we no doubt will be, dare I say it might be of a more practical nature if we were not to allow Dagny to roam the countryside. Leastways, not until that touched queen has simmered down, and these ricemen’ve been wiped out.”

  “A most practical idea, Ezekiel. Seeing as how you are currently the only member of her family, well… known for certain to be alive, can I count on you to persuade her? I’ve offered her the use of some commodious quarters in Barataria, and she turned me down. But I can’t imagine it’s not a matter of time before Boneaux tosses her out of the Tamatave cottage, now that she’s not…”

  “Of any use to him, right,” Zeke agreed. “You can count on me, Count.” Zeke didn’t laugh. “I don’t think she’s too keen on that Lyall gent living in the cottage. He’s got some mighty strange habits. He takes snuff and spits it on the floor, for one thing. And he never bathes.” Zeke sighed. “Let me tell you. You might think I’m nothing but a worthless cove who’s always on the town, but I’m mighty handy with a pistol.” He patted his pistol in its holster. “We lived the hard life in New York, and I’ve been known to pick off a few toads in my time. I’ll blast my way through those ricemen, don’t worry about me.”

  Two bells were struck. They had one hour of daylight to round the point and knock away the ricemen. Stephen Miller heaved the log. Tomaj sniffed; the insistent trade wind was on the beam. According to Broadhecker’s report, ricemen had already landed a party by the time he’d opened fire on the junk, and he’d figured maybe only forty men remained aboard. Tomaj calculated: Ten ricemen they’d used up at Barataria, perhaps ten more after the broadside when they’d given the chase out of Mavasarona Bay. He reckoned his own complement of eighty prime hands could make short work of it…

  But he must first find out where Dagny, Sal, and Bellingham were. It was all very well to go blasting away at the ricemen, but how was he to know those he loved were not aboard? Ladrones often ransomed captives, a possibility given their meager condition at the moment, but they just as often murdered captives out of sheer heinousness and revenge.

  “We shall have to be crafty, Zeke. Perhaps if the ricemen are as miserably decayed as they seem to be, with no option of making sail, they won’t even put up a fight. But I’m not relying on that.”

  As he gave not a hang about fooling the ricemen, and because they were well acquainted with the bold crimson bulwarks, and the pristine white topmasts and cross-trees of Stormalong, Tomaj had ordered her true colors to be hoisted. The red pennant of no mercy flew at the masthead, sporting the traditional skull and crossed cutlasses, and a festive skeleton drinking a toast with a bipedal Newfoundland dog. It meant I’m on good terms with death.

  “You …” Zeke said, clearly unable to spit out the rest of the sentence.

  Tomaj waited.

  “You …” he tried again, aheming into his fist. “You’re in love with my sister. Aren’t you.”

  “Yes,” Tomaj said lightly, raising the glass to sweep the shore for a sight of the fishing village he knew to be on the point. “I’ve been in love with her since she fell into my lagoon. Why else would I bother scuffing my knuckles so many times, walloping the likes of you?” Lowering the glass, he glanced at Zeke, but couldn’t discern if the landlord recalled these incidents with fondness or retribution. “The three people I love most in this world are out there. And I intend to get them back.”

  He moved to the ladder, for he was going aloft to get a better view.

  “I believe you,” Zeke called.

  Look for T’ien-hou … calmer of storms and protector of ships …

  It was warm and insulated, like sleeping in a featherbed. The flat roar of the ocean resounded in Dagny’s head. Where was she? Oh, yes … pirates …

  Opening her eyes, she detected only a vague difference between light and dark. A great weight pressed down on her legs, her right arm. She could take a breath with the largest effort, stymied by the acrid infusion of gunpowder. A cave. An explosion. That marauding riceman had followed her into the cave.

  Must breathe. Must move.

  With gargantuan effort, she rolled something dull and heavy from her arm. Twisting her upper body, she rose and saw the cave mouth only twenty feet off, wisps of smoke still clinging to towers of rubble. Acclimating her eyes to the darkness, she saw she’d toppled the pirate from her person. He lay on his back, slack-jawed, a little hole in his chest that oozed a mucous corundum and garnet against shades of black and gray. Her chest was wet and clammy. Egad, some of his innards must have leaked onto her.

  Her pistol! Her Lang’s!

  It was still in her clutches, but it felt like a handful of cotton. She must move!

  A boulder pinned her right leg at about knee level. Beyond the cave mouth there was no movement. Screaming might attract more trouble than help. Yet if ricemen had won the fight, wouldn’t they be milling about out there, scalping or taking trophies or whatever they did? Whacking away at ling chih, death by a thousand cuts? Victorious miners would be milling also. Maybe everyone had died.

  Placing the pistol in her sodden lap, Dagny pressed both hands to the boulder and pushed. Pushed and pushed. Nothing budged.

  She bawled with the unfairness of it all. She’d always protected and saved her brothers—now she’d die of starvation in a cave next to a rotten riceman’s corpse! Her efforts doubled when she realized how rank the corpse would stink in less than a few hours in this humid tropical atmosphere.

  “God-damnit!” she cried, but all she could hear was that ocean roar. Maybe she hadn’t cried aloud. She screamed louder. “God-damnit!”

  The boulder moved maybe a few centimeters, but just as swiftly rocked back into her knee again.

  A silhouette, a slender creeping man at the mouth of the cave. Dagny didn’t much care if it was riceman or miner—she’d take her chances with the ling chih torture!

  “God-damnit! Get this rock off of me!”

  The creeper advanced, followed by another, like spiders. Malagasy so much resembled the Kwangtungmen that especially in silhouette it was difficult to tell the difference—some opined Malagasy had come from Java in canoes centuries ago.

  She called in Malagasy, “Help me! Get this rock off of me!”

  They came swifter now, four or five of them. Miners. Their mouths moved, but she heard no speech. Between them all, they rolled the rock from her leg, and helped her to stand. And collapse back again.

  Again they lifted her, slinging her arms over their shoulders. Her skirts were a t
attered mess of pennants strangling her legs and she wanted nothing more than to strip them off. As one body, they limped to the mouth of the cave and into the dappled sunlight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE PIRATE JUNK

  DAGNY COULDN’T UNDERSTAND THE MINER’S descriptions of things, as the explosion had damaged her ears, so she staggered back up to the camping area to see if she could discover any clues.

  The only items left were her cooking pots, bedding, and the aye-aye gourds. All things of no interest to pillaging pirates. The monkey in his cage was even gone. Dagny detected no blood in the areas where Sal and Hector had slept. Wracked with frustration, she tore her filthy blackened skirts from her and flung them into tree branches. Then she lurched back to grab the skirts to wipe the grime, soot, and blood from her bodice.

  What a gump she’d been, not heeding Tomaj’s warning to stay away from the mine! Didn’t he know what he was talking about? Of course he did!

  Look for T’ien-hou … calmer of storms and protector of ships … “Protector of ships,” Dagny mouthed, whether aloud or not, she had no idea.

  She twirled to face the miners who had followed her up the hillock. They knew she was Count Balásházy’s special guest—Dagny had told them as much when she’d asked for permission to camp here. “Where did the rice-eating pirates go?” she asked in Malagasy, probably shouting. “Where are the sinoy?”

  They all jabbered and pointed in the sea’s direction. She smelled the ocean wind.

  “How far—” Dagny remembered Sal’s map. Rooting around in his discarded bedding, she choked with joy to find the creased and dingy map, shoving it at the miner who seemed to be in charge. “We are here!” she yelled, pointing.

  Maps were an unknown concept to the miners. It was only when Dagny placed a rock on the ground to indicate the mine and a branch to indicate the ocean that she was able to understand she might reach the ocean by nightfall.