Tomaj frightened her by whisking the glass from her hand and heedlessly plunking both glasses onto the dining table, the wine sloshing.
Fixing her with a wild look, he dropped to his knees before her, taking her hands in his and bending his head to her lap. As if she were a queen!
Dagny’s eyes darted from bulkhead to bulkhead in the cabin, not knowing where to look. He wrenched her hands most eloquently and breathed upon her knuckles, until she wanted to beg him to stand. What was he doing? His earnestness made her nervous. Was this another one of his Hungarian sexual rituals? She relaxed at that thought.
“I am Count Pellegrin Tomaj Balásházy, Captain of Hussars, Captain in the American navy.”
She’d never seen his eyes so wide with feeling, brimming over with terrifying sentiment and love. What was he driving at? This must be a strange pirate tradition, she assured herself as she felt behind for a chair in which to sit.
On his knees still, he clenched her hands in his, his shimmering peridot irises reflecting the stern waves. He had an entire ocean in his eyes, the “roaring forties” of the tropical latitudes. Dagny smiled, regardless of what antics he was up to. I’ve never loved a man before. This is the first man I’ve ever loved.
“Bos of Barataria, Captain of Stormalong, King of the Betsimisaraka.” Squeezing his eyes to shut out the stern waves, he seemed to want to blot something. Dagny tried to twist one hand from his and stroke his hair, but he wouldn’t permit it.
Inhaling deeply, he opened his eyes again and beseeched her. When he swallowed with labor, his throat was marvelous. “Now I am king of nothing, only these vessels, and a future land in the Brazil. Dagny Edvarda. Be thou my wife according to the Law of Moses and Israel.”
It was probably some minutes before Dagny could breathe again. When she did, she later recalled an image of the swaying lamp at the deckhead, and the egg rocking in its cradle of celestine.
“Dagny, Dagny.”
Tomaj yelled for the sentry. He’d carried her to the bedstead he’d laid out in the sleeping quarters, a tiny berth large enough for their bodies where they were cocooned by chestnut bulkheads. A cool cloth smeared over her forehead. Sounds of clamoring men came from the dining cabin.
“Malala, wake up. It’s me. Tomaj.”
Dagny opened her eyes again. “Tomaj.” He tried to pin her down, so she struggled to sit, and pushed his hands away. “I’m fine.” She brushed hair from her face. “What happened?”
“You swooned!” His voice was panicked.
She tried to remember. “Oh, yes. I had a dream. You were on your knees, proclaiming—”
“It was no dream.”
She placed her palm against his face. His face was warm. “It was no dream,” she agreed.
Scooting closer, he gathered her in his arms and kissed her mouth.
Ah, this is no dream. This is real.
Relaxing into the strength of his arms, she just wanted those men to go away. But they clamored even louder, and one voice in particular pushed its way through.
“Tomaj! Tomaj!” Sal panted with urgency. “I have to talk to you!”
Bolting upright to a sitting position, Tomaj cried, “Sal! Can’t you see we need to be alone?”
Dagny saw Ramonja weaving unsteadily, balancing a chafing dish of something he was unused to cooking. He looked like he’d pitch forward onto his face once someone removed the platter from his hands.
Sal lunged, grasping Tomaj’s shoulder in his claw. “Tomaj, Tomaj! I need you right now!”
Tomaj picked the hand off his shoulder as though it were a turd. “Sal. Dagny’s fine, but I need to be with her.”
She smoothed her face against Tomaj’s. “It’s all right. Go with Sal. He wouldn’t be saying this if he didn’t truly need you.”
Tomaj touched the tip of his nose to hers. “Dagny, this is real. Will you be my wife?”
“Of course, my love. Now, go with Sal.”
Once the men were gone, Dagny fell into a, deep, tumultuous slumber. I love ships, she thought. And I love Tomaj.
Sal dragged Tomaj to his surgeon’s cabin. He tossed Tomaj onto the cot, and wouldn’t let go of Tomaj’s hands, not even to brush away a curtain of mother-of-pearl hair that fell before one eye.
“What is it, Sal? I really must get back to Dagny.”
“Tomaj,” he panted, “I had another asgina dream, just now. It involved you. It was so clear I can still see it in my mind, as though it were imprinted on the insides of my eyelids.”
Tomaj nodded with patience. He wrenched a hand away to tuck the curtain of hair behind Sal’s ear. “Tell me.” He had to believe in Sal’s asgina dreams, after the one he’d related to Tomaj in the bath-house.
Closing his eyes, Sal shuddered, drawing his robe together before his chest with horror. “I’d fallen. Fallen off the edge of a cliff, a strange black cliff into a void of churning fluffy blue and white clouds. Only I wasn’t falling, I was being blown sideways by this great wind. Then you followed me. I don’t know whether you fell or were pushed, but suddenly you were there too, trying to grab my hand.”
Tomaj stroked the side of Sal’s face with reassurance. “A cliff? My dove, we’re not even landing a party until we meet Stormalong and the Italians in False Bay. Where we’re rounding at Cape Hangklip, there are certainly some precipitous cliffs that fall steeply into the bay, but I can assure you I have no intention of walking them. And perhaps neither should you, even if there are said to be great—what do you call them? Adamantine spars?”
Sal scooted nearly into Tomaj’s lap and embraced him tightly. “No, no, no,” he cried wretchedly. “How can I prevent the asgina dream from coming true? Perhaps it’s in the Brazil, it doesn’t matter—it will happen.”
Gripping Sal by the wrists, Tomaj held him. “But the asgina dream about the monkey in the trees—that told of something happening at the exact moment you dreamed it. What was I doing while you dreamed this what, an hour ago? Why, I was gazing over the rail trying to gauge the overfall. Perhaps that’s what you saw.”
“No, when I ran into your cabin, that’s the very moment after I dreamed it. What were you doing in the cabin? Wait, don’t tell me.”
Tomaj laughed, and leaned back against the bulkhead with hands behind his head. “Dear Sal. I was asking for your sister’s hand in marriage.”
This shock must have removed the asgina dream from Sal’s brain, as Tomaj hoped it would. In fact, Sal’s reaction was akin to Dagny’s. His jaw dropped, his eyes nearly popped from his head, but he didn’t swoon—he flung himself into the cradle of Tomaj’s arm and kissed his face over and over, declaring, “Marriage! Ah, now you truly will be my family! Oh, Tomaj, I couldn’t ask for a better brother-in-law, and a count!” he teased. “Does that make her a countess?”
Tomaj rocked Dagny’s brother in his arms. “But how do you know what her answer was? You saw how ill the concept of marriage to me made her.”
Sal slung a leg over Tomaj’s lap and ran his mouth over Tomaj’s face, ear, hair. “Because. If she loves you even half as much as I do, her answer was yes. And I know she loves you at least that much.”
“At least!” Tomaj joked.
Sal collapsed backward, breathing heavily, and cried, “Adamastor!”
Haughtily, Tomaj drew himself up. “Adamastor? What does that poetic nonsense have to do with anything?”
“Zaleski told me! Adamastor appeared to Vasco de Gama as he was rounding the Cape of Storms, and he told de Gama that anyone attempting the voyage to India would meet with disaster.”
“Oh, gammon and spinnage!” Tomaj cried with disgust. “Sal! That’s some lyrical fudge that blasted Portagee poet Camões invented. I wish Zaleski would stop scaring people half to death with these stories. Besides, even if it were true—the warning was only for seamen attempting to get to the East Indies, not those who’ve already spent ten years there.”
Perhaps feeling ashamed at believing in such smoke, Sal perched on the edge of the cot, deflated
. “No doubt you’re right, Tomaj. And I’m sure the asgina dream only meant to warn us to stay away from the cliffs at the Cape of Storms.”
Penitent, Tomaj gathered Sal in his arms and pulled him back onto the cot. They lay propped on some meager pillows, Tomaj suddenly so drowsy that he yawned, petting the top of Sal’s head as he lay against his chest. “No worries, Sal. We’ll stay away from cliffs.”
Sal murmured, “You must get back to Dagny. She’ll wonder where her bridegroom is.”
“Yes,” Tomaj said, drifting into an insensate realm.
“Where will you marry? When?”
“I don’t know,” Tomaj muttered. “Rio de Janeiro perhaps … or … tomorrow.”
The last thing he heard was eight bells being struck, pealing clear and colder than seven bells had sounded.
Tomaj was jerked from blissful slumber—damn. He’d taken a caulk for only two hours before a Harmony Row hand came barreling down the passageway shouting ostensibly at the sentry, “Captain’s needed above! We’re in for dirty weather.”
Sal, not being of a mind to concern himself with these matters, slumbered on as heavy as a kedge anchor on Tomaj’s chest. Tomaj, too, felt muddled. Had someone been flogging the glass? Since he’d taken a caulk, the sea was running remarkably higher, dashing spray against the deadlight.
As Broadhecker summoned the hands aloft to reduce sail, Tomaj gently slid Sal from his chest. The vessel veered toward larboard. Feet pounded on deck above as hands dashed to brace yards and steady her course. The Harmony Row fellow, name of Little Man, burst into the surgeon’s cabin.
“Cap’n!” He touched his knuckles to his cap. “It’s a white squall, and the quartermaster said to pass the word for you.”
Tomaj stood. “When did the blow come on?”
“One bell!”
“From the north?”
“North by east.”
A momentary flash of lightning lit the surgeon’s cabin. “All right, tell Youx to have the trysail off her, and get jackasses for the hawse holes.” A rumble of thunder sounded then, so Tomaj could gauge the storm’s distance.
“Aye, Cap’n.” Little Man stepped back into the passageway. “There’s white water over her bows already, over the chess trees.”
Dagny stood in the hallway gripping the great cabin’s doorjamb, as she had not yet gotten her sea legs, and this was the worst storm of the journey. She looked as though she had a sick headache, and Tomaj wanted to reassure her. He proclaimed loudly to Little Man, “Yes, but remember when we stood on for the Cape ten years ago? All hands just hauled down and clew up. A similar blow, and we were never once pooped. I’ll be right up, I must see first to my fiancée. You may have heard she had quite a scare tonight.”
Visibly cheered, whether by the thought that Dagny was the captain’s fiancée, or the scare she’d received, Little Man went above. Tomaj steered Dagny by the shoulders back into the great cabin, where he feigned indifference to the weather.
“Tomaj. Does this mean we’re nearing Cape Agulhas, where powerful eddies suck us back into the Indian Ocean?”
He uttered a thoroughly false laugh as he slid into his oilskin. “That Zaleski and his ghost stories!” He went to embrace Dagny where she stood clutching a chair—perhaps her last dry embrace for the next twenty-four hours or so. “No one gets sucked anywhere, malala, but I want you to promise me you’ll stay below. Sal had a nightmare and needs your company. You stay below with Sal and Zeke, and mind Madame Rabelais, she’s prone to seasickness.”
“But I want to see what happens,” Dagny protested. “And I left some plants on deck in Ravenhurst cases.”
“I’ll have someone put your plants in the orlop with the rest.” Tomaj kissed her mouth, so warm and pliant, and for a moment he wished he’d never again have to suffer a gale at sea.
Broadhecker burst in, shouting that waves were breaking amidships, so Tomaj had to leave Dagny.
CHAPTER THRTY-ONE
TO GIVE THEM A GARLAND INSTEAD OF ASHES
THE GALE WAS THE FIERCEST TOMAJ HAD SEEN IN eleven years, when a hurricane in the Gulf of Guinea dismasted the fine schooner he’d had since Louisiana.
With the sunrise, he saw that a black cloud obliterated the entire sky, and one couldn’t tell where the sun was unless one knew where to expect it. The massive cloud was a solid sheet of charcoal, with mounded highlights of verdigris that roiled and churned like the volcanoes of Hephaestus, reminding Tomaj of the warnings of Adamastor.
All night long, then into the forenoon watch, bursts of forked lightning pierced the bottom of the monstrous cloud, the resonant booms of thunder following with increasing rapidity, telling of the storm’s approach. A long furious sea of whitecapped rollers that canted the vessel sent driving waves crashing amidships, washing men off their feet, sweeping their hats overboard, leaving them clinging to the fife rail, cleats, or kevels. Several waves were so monumental that when they met the bows, they crashed with the deafening explosions of a massive rockfall into a dry canyon, flushing everything on deck that wasn’t secured into the scuppers, including one of Dagny’s “Ravenhurst cases.” Tomaj sloshed to larboard to retrieve it, face and hands stinging from the needling spray that exploded past so swiftly it vanished into the pitching sea just as fast.
Stormalong, who could never bear to be below, sat mellow to the lee of the quarterdeck, her golden eyes observantly flickering at the hands pinioned to the rigging by horizontal winds, their faces whipped into reddened masses. A pigsty, arrack kegs, a hen coop all flew past her, yet she sat with the bland complacency of a judge, her webbed paws steely and immobile, although her entire muscular body skated several feet with each trough into which the vessel plunged.
Tomaj swooped down to grab the miniature greenhouse and a blast of wind bowled him over. Spinning on his ass, he shot his legs out stiffly, jamming his feet against a gun carriage, nearly shattering his knees to pieces. Pelting rain running into his nostrils as he faced the sky, Tomaj crushed his fingers into the broken glass of the flower case. He was barely cognizant when a hot breath puffed against his neck, and someone dragged him by the collar back to the quarterdeck ladder.
Sluicing the water from his face, Tomaj moved his dripping hand to the ruff of the dog. With her triple coat like a duck’s she had the ability to stay dry, and he scratched her with appreciation. She merely stuck out her tongue in relaxation, watching a hen run by, as though she were observing horse races in New Orleans.
A downpour of oblique rain hit them when the wind roared and shifted two points, during which Tomaj and all hands had to scream at clamorous levels merely to be heard, instantly repaid with mouths full of water driven by the wind. He resorted to hand signals he hoped were understood.
During a particularly ferocious blast of wind, the timber of the fore-topmast cracked with a boom almost as loud as thunder. The fore-topmast, toppled from its lofty height, coasted slowly to larboard, buffeted by howling wind. It seemed to take a long time to hit the water, rigging whipping as it was set almost gently against the crest of a cavernous trough of sea. Hands fled aft before the avalanche of rigging, but just as quickly went slipping and sliding forward to throw aside spars, stays, and shrouds that had become tangled all ahoo on deck. Providently, only two men had been squashed by spars.
Some men lived for such storms, and Errol Zaleski was one. As much as he’d resisted being impressed into the Royal Navy, having preferred to sing in the opera instead, he was a first-rate seaman. As soon as it became obvious the ship would have to be put before the wind and she wasn’t answering her helm, Tomaj sprang to the mainmast to cut loose the axes. Handing them round, Zaleski was first aloft. Though the wind was now a horizontal tempest, and Zaleski old enough to be most hands’ father, he ever-valiantly struggled up the foremast, shredded and whipped by the shrieking winds, his mission to cleave the fore shrouds. All hands on deck were so fixed by his valor, they were taken by surprise when, after a momentary lull in the wind, it suddenly shifted a full ten p
oints, and blasted northwest by west onto the starboard quarter.
Men who weren’t slung in lifelines went spinning and hurtling, colliding with masts and bulwarks. The darkness was pervasive, but Tomaj hauled himself to the quarterdeck. Once he cleared the ladder, he was smashed into the great cabin’s skylight, but recovered enough to grab Bellingham’s shoulders where the youth sprawled, holding fast to the coaming. Bellingham had been thrown clear over the helm with the sudden shift in the tempest, and now she yawed powerfully, sending her nearly on her beam-ends.
“Stay right there!” Tomaj bellowed, and scrabbled for the wheel, putting it hard up.
Poor Bellingham had stood a long trick at the wheel, and Tomaj felt he should’ve sent him below a long time ago, to vomit and curse and pray with the others.
Now, as Edvarda slowly righted, Tomaj saw it.
There. On the larboard beam. The bright spot he’d been waiting for.
Bellingham stood up, apparently no worse for the wear, as the wind quieted.
“Whoa,” Bellingham said in awe, wringing out the hem of his peacoat.
Tomaj nodded in the direction of the gleaming spot at the base of a vast blackened hemispheric that roiled swiftly over their heads. “Remember that?”
Beatific understanding came over Bellingham’s face. Now only a bearable drizzle pelted them. “I should say as I do, sir. Means we best stand fast for the time being.”
“Aye. There’s Zaleski, down from the foremast. Besides being a lighthouse builder and a Greenland harpooner, wasn’t he also a parson before the press gang got him?”
“Aye, I should say so. Who went to Fiddler’s Green?”
The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy Page 38
