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The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

Page 39

by Karen Mercury


  “No one that I know of. Come with me. Frost!” Tomaj bawled out to the dazed hand who staggered past. “Take the helm, keep her steady northwest by north.”

  Dagny took refuge in Sal’s cabin.

  It was the smallest cabin, with the least amount of loose objects that might hit one in the head. Zeke and Monsieur Rabelais joined them, his wife being too ill to walk, and soon they were all crammed into the eight-foot-square cabin.

  “Perhaps it’s better in the great cabin,” Dagny suggested. She attempted to stay as stiff as a ruler sitting on the deck, her feet braced against the legs of the only table that was bolted down. “There, we could hold onto the gun carriage.”

  Sal’s head wobbled sickly on a weak neck. “This is the surgeon’s cabin. No gun.”

  Zeke alone seemed impervious to the heeling of the vessel. “I’ve got the second lieutenant’s cabin. There’s a gun in there.”

  Much later, Dagny ventured to ask, “What’ll we do if that deadlight breaks and the sea rushes in?”

  Zeke answered. “Risk the run and try to make it to my cabin.”

  “Ugh,” Sal moaned. “I’m going above. This is absurd. It can’t possibly be any worse up there. At least I can lash myself to a mast, or whatever it is they’re doing. They’ve got fresh air, anyway.”

  “Can’t,” Zeke reminded him. “Hatches are battened down. Rum?”

  Sal groaned louder and turned his face away from Zeke.

  Dagny shut her eyes and thought of Tomaj. That seemed to help. Her stomach churned from retching up nothing but bile. She had attempted a sip of Zeke’s rum, but the results were not encouraging. So far, they had all taken turns at being “admiral of the narrow seas,” as Hector would have it, one who drunkenly vomits into the lap of the person opposite.

  “Did you know,” Sal said, sounding as though about to play “admiral” again. “Tomaj asked Dagny to marry him.” He rolled his unsteady head to face her. “Sorry, ducky. I was waiting for you to tell Zeke, but you didn’t.”

  “Ugh,” Dagny replied. “I was waiting to stop puking.”

  “Marry?” was Zeke’s only response as he swallowed more rum straight from the bottle.

  Monsieur Rabelais came to life. “Ah, but my dear! That is the best news I’ve heard all day! Captain Balásházy is the best sort of man possible. When shall you wed?”

  “As soon as she stops puking,” Sal croaked.

  “Ah! Speaking of wedding …” Rabelais crawled for the door. “I must check on Josephine. Surely she has fallen out of a porthole by now.” On his knees, he gripped the door latch and pulled himself up.

  “Cape of Good Hope.” Sal grunted. “It’s more like ‘Cape of Ruined Stomachs.’ Agh!”

  He howled, for the ship had heeled so disastrously that Monsieur Rabelais was wrenched from where he clung to the door latch. The door banged open, emitting a sentry who dangled from the doorway with bug eyes.

  All four of them tumbled toward the bulkhead, Zeke’s head slamming directly against the deadlight. Sixteen limbs were entwined, and they were all drenched in rum. Monsieur Rabelais was at the top of the pile, and he was the weightiest, so they all implored him to climb off by whatever means available.

  “Do you think we’re foundering?” Dagny asked, all thoughts of her stomach evaporated.

  “In a gale like this,” Sal spoke with his face crushed against the bulkhead, “it’s not unlikely for the winds to tear off a mast.”

  “Yes, yes.” Dagny’s face was in Zeke’s armpit. “I heard mention of that. We can be set upon our beam-ends until someone can hack the mast free—otherwise, it acts as an anchor. That must be what’s happened.”

  There was no hope of removing themselves from the bulkhead. They remained tragically pinned in the corner of the cabin, although Rabelais soon clambered into his own corner, holding his head and moaning, “Josephine! Mon épouse!”

  They held fast for several long moments. Zeke tapped the glass of the deadlight. “This thing had better hold.”

  When the ship righted herself, they all exhaled in unison with loud groans. Nearly laughing with relief, they crawled to their former positions on the deck, Dagny declaring, “They must’ve cut that mast loose, or whatever it was!”

  “Everyone’s going up,” Sal remarked. “I may as well go, too. I need some damned air. This storm’s gone on for twelve hours. It can’t possibly—oh, now what?”

  Out in the passageway, Tomaj’s great cabin sentry, whose torso had been hanging from their open doorway during the dramatic tipping of the ship, stamped his feet to attention and saluted. “Sir! All’s well above, I trust?”

  Dagny had never heard the sentry speak. She didn’t even know his name. The four convicts swiveled their heads as the boots of at least three men stormed down the passageway.

  Dagny and Sal shared a glance.

  “It’s quieted outside,” she whispered.

  Sal looked to the deckhead as if he could see clouds. “Yes,” he whispered back. “It’s like the lull in the middle of a storm when—”

  “Yes, yes, Fowler, all’s well,” Tomaj said as he peered into the surgeon’s cabin. “We just had to cut loose the fore topmast, that’s all. A few pigs flying about. Well, well.” He smiled broadly.

  Feeling awkward, Dagny tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and attempted to grin. Tomaj’s oilskin streamed water onto the deck as he removed it with the help of some ghostly hands behind him. Rainwater drizzled from the tips of his pigtail, though his skin and bearing had only been enhanced by his travails in the out-of-doors. He was serene, nearly angelic, appearing as a beacon of good hope. He stretched a hand out for Dagny, and she took it.

  Bringing her hand to his lips, Tomaj bestowed her with a grand Handkuß laden with a love greater than the Viennese hand kiss he’d given her at Townshend’s ball an eternity ago.

  They gazed into each other’s eyes until Zaleski, behind Tomaj in the passageway, bawled, “All right, now. If I ain’t got a couple to marry, I need to cut those topmast spars from the side, so tumble up already!”

  “Aye!” Hector agreed. “By the time everyone’s climbed out of the scuppers the dead calm’ll be over, and—oof!”

  Tomaj elbowed Hector. He looked at the motley cabin full of humans with the utmost serenity. “Will you all join us in my cabin?”

  They were all rushed into the great cabin’s dayroom. Suddenly Zaleski had a Bible in his hand—it seemed Tomaj materialized it from his sea chest. Hector shoved Dagny into position next to Tomaj, yanking Sal and Zeke as the first available bodies to stand beside her.

  Zaleski thumbed through the Bible pages. “Now, if I recall correctly …”

  Tomaj took a lock of sodden hair plastered to Dagny’s face and tucked it into her messy bun. “Isaiah 61:10. ‘My God has clothed me with the garments of salvation …”

  Zaleski fumbled so terribly with the unfamiliar book, Hector had to walk around the entire bridal party, grab the Bible, and flip through the pages himself. “Here!” he pouted, slapping it back into Zaleski’s hands.

  Snarling at Hector, Zaleski muttered, “Brat,” but soon affixed a celestial expression to his face, and smiled.

  Dagny looked not to Zaleski’s teeth, but to her beloved. I’ve never loved a man before I knew Tomaj. Did she just say that aloud? Tomaj was here, he was alive, and even crowded by the salt-drenched bodies of a room full of brothers and pirates, the power of his spirit shone through, and seemed to paint the entire cabin with a happy light.

  She’d never been happier.

  Zaleski cleared his throat. “All right, now.” He mumbled some unintelligible words, trying to find his place on the page. “Ah, I see. ‘He has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up—”

  Broadhecker was out in the passageway, shouti
ng at the sentry.

  “You can’t go in there, sir.”

  Fowler tried his best, but the door was kicked open and a red-faced Broadhecker burst in, pointed an accusing finger at the heavens above. “Captain. Sorry to disturb you!” he shouted angrily. “We cut the foremast rigging from the side, now it’s fouled in the rudder, and she’s not paying off!”

  There was not a breath in the cabin as Broadhecker glared at a dozen blank faces. He added, “Smit says two foot of water in the well!”

  Hector bolted. “The jackasses! It’s coming in through the jackasses!”

  A great wall of water slammed into the stern, sending Rabelais and Sal lurching against the bulkhead, while even Zaleski banged his head against a cabinet. Tomaj’s hand tightened around Dagny’s, and he smiled at her apologetically.

  “Malala. I must go above.”

  Wind rattled the stern windows, points of rain needling the glass relentlessly. Hector tore himself from Broadhecker’s grasp and raced to yank the Bible from Zaleski’s apathetic grip. Positioning himself before Dagny and Tomaj, Hector seemed to be reading more from memory than sight.

  Frantically he shouted, “‘To give them a garland instead of ashes! The oil of gladness instead of a faint spirit! They will be called oaks of righteousness’—Dead Chelsea, by God!”

  As a mountain of water crashed into the starboard quarter, Hector dropped the book to the deck and fled into the passageway. Zaleski followed, and Dagny thought she saw blood on his cranium.

  “My love, go!” she urged Tomaj.

  He kissed her. He grabbed her hand and shoved something onto her finger.

  “I’ll be right back,” he assured her, kissing her hand ceaselessly until a bolting Sal nearly ripped both their arms from their bodies, in such a mad hurry to go above to get some air.

  Dagny staggered with the careening of the ship. “Come back, my love!” she called, waving. “When you’re finished.”

  A heavy silence settled over the cabin, the only orchestra the pounding of weather outside the hull.

  Zeke snorted, and went for the cabinet where Dagny had stowed the Montrachet before the blow hit them. He seemed to have wonderful sea legs, and nothing fazed him as he guzzled freely from the bottle.

  He gestured with the bottle. “What’s that ring?”

  Dagny felt blank. “Oh!” She looked down at her hand.

  It was the celestine ring Tomaj always wore on his truncated finger.

  CHAPTER THKTY-TWO

  WHAT LIFE GIVES

  AT THE RESURGENCE OF THE STORM, EDVARDA WAS hurled on her beam-ends.

  Carronades broke loose from their train tackles. On the orlop, their cargo of tea and opium had shifted to the lee. Men slid across the waist or clung to belaying pins, all watches now on deck. A fresh sort of fury came over the storm, the likes of which Tomaj had never seen.

  Many hands gathered about the wheel, the natural gathering place of hands during a gale. Tomaj, Zaleski, Youx, and Broadhecker debated the possibility of going below to the steerage compartment to attach relieving tackle to the tiller arm, then sending Zaleski out the great cabin’s stern windows with a lifeline to cut loose the spars and rigging from the rudder.

  At Tomaj’s command, several men dashed forward to relay the message below, and Tomaj grasped Bellingham’s shoulder with his fingertips, as the lad attempted to run forward, too.

  “Avast, you little shit!”

  For once, Bellingham closed his mouth, the better to keep rain from it.

  A sudden surge of wind and water knocked them both on their asses. Sleet pelted their faces as they clung to the binnacle. Tomaj was assured enough of his handhold to loosen one hand and clutch the shoulder of Bellingham’s peacoat to his chest, sucking water into his lungs as a vast wave surged over them.

  When he was able to squeeze water from his eyes, lift his head, and breathe, a new hand clung to the binnacle.

  Raising himself on an elbow, Tomaj shouted, spitting water at Sal, “What’re you doing here? Get below!”

  “I need air!” Sal cried, clinging equally to the binnacle and to Bellingham’s shirt.

  Tomaj inhaled deeply, the better to bellow, “God-damn your ‘air’! Do you know what a god-damned—”

  In another rush of water, Sal vanished.

  Tomaj and Bellingham gaped at each other, spitting fountains of water. Tomaj knew the boy would surf down the deck, most likely hurling himself into the sea, if there was a chance to save Sal.

  Sal had gone over the bulwark beyond the salvation of the rigging, just a flash of a peacoat and mother-of-pearl hair.

  Tomaj wrenched Bellingham by the lapels. “If you move from here, I’ll have your hide!”

  Bellingham nodded, his eyes sparking with fear.

  “Call ‘man overboard!’ Round her, and lower the boat!”

  “S … s … sir!” Bellingham shrieked in a stutter. “‘Tis foolhardy to lower a boat in these waters! How about we heave the life buoys and the nets what Stormalong brings up fish in—”

  “Man overboard!” Tomaj yelled so loudly the words scorched his throat. “Lower the boat!” He caught the ear of Hegemsness, who appeared to be sliding off to execute the command, so Tomaj raised himself on his palms, and was instantly vaulted to the bulwark, where he nearly hurtled over the newly raised height.

  Sal’s head bobbed at the crest of a wave fifty feet high. The whiteness of his face, and his arms that flailed pointlessly, were specks in the great wall of the sea.

  Tearing off his oilskin, which fluttered behind him and slapped against the deck, Tomaj grasped a line and jumped onto the gunwale, no time to take off his boots. He executed a divine dive, his feet springing off the wet solidity of the wood, and sailed into the drink.

  He had good aim. Sal’s white face was only about ten yards away.

  As they rose and fell in the turbulent sea, Tomaj kicked harder to get closer to Sal, who couldn’t swim. Let the current take your body, Tomaj remembered, and positioned himself to the weather gauge so he would sink onto Sal’s body.

  The next swell pushed Sal closer to the ship, and Tomaj farther from it. They were grabbed by one of those vicious cross-seas that occur when winds swiftly change direction. Tomaj was lifted from another trough and held nearly vertical for the few seconds necessary for him to kick off his boots.

  Hands lined the larboard rail—in between sheets of pounding rain, they appeared to Tomaj as a row of coruscating black disks waving their arms like so many fuzzy spiders—but he saw no one move to lower the boat, and he thought of Bellingham’s words. Bellingham was right—it was foolhardy to risk anyone further, and the life buoys the hands heaved were driven back against the hull by the raging wind.

  Tomaj watched the life buoys, and thrashed like mad with all the power at his behest to swim to where he’d be caught in the wind’s current, and perhaps thrown back toward the ship, too.

  Is Dagny up there at the rail? Tomaj hoped to God she wasn’t. Imagining her as one of the black blobs jumping up and down at the rail, Tomaj discovered a new spurt of force in his limbs, and on the next upheaval of powerful water that raised him to the level of his quarterdeck, he positioned himself obliquely, and shot down the tunnel head-first like a gull swooping for a herring.

  Ah, he could almost see the hull of his ship!

  He broke the surface at the bottom of a trough, choking and expressing saltwater through his nostrils and mouth in great spumes of nauseating bile. Spitting and coughing, he waited to rise to the crest of the next wave.

  He had not gained a single yard on the Edvarda. The ghostly hull he’d seen was just the bottom of another rolling, sea-green trench.

  Yet there was Sal, nearly hove into Edvarda’s hull, a speck of ivory against a swell of malachite green.

  They bobbed furiously up and down, as though a cruel god meant to send them directly to heaven. On a particularly high crest, Tomaj was thrown even farther from Sal. Arms buffeting the surface, Tomaj gasped, seeking the spaces i
n between gushes of water that would fill his lungs with a shred of air. His gut bloated with water, tiredness overcame him. This particular god wrested them apart, and there must come a time when he, as Emir-el-Bahr, must admit defeat.

  I’m not in control of the water. The water controls me.

  The sea, he’d always known, was more powerful than him. He thought he had come to terms with her.

  Dagny Edvarda. How I have loved you. Your love brought me to a higher place. For that I will be eternally grateful.

  Tomaj looked down upon the scene from on high. His mind remained lucid as his limbs thrashed no more, and his body sagged as water flooded his mouth.

  From the ship that lurched like a toy, a sudden flash, a bronze ball of fur vaulted from the gunwale, plummeting like a flood of liquid copper into a bucket. Stormalong.

  Upon the crest of a serene wave, Tomaj watched the powerful dog paddling in the surf. Each crest brought her closer to Sal, who was now merely a hand sticking up, grasping a vast bottomless valley of water.

  She looked at Tomaj. She looked at Sal.

  Save Sal, Tomaj thought.

  Stormalong gave Tomaj one last terrified glance. Paddling furiously, she gained another crest, then skated down a mountain of water. Skittering and flailing in her velocity, she nearly bypassed Sal, but stretched her neck like a seal, and grasped Sal’s shirtfront in her mouth.

  Tomaj smiled. Dagny. How I wish I could have stayed with you.

  There is no end like the eastern forest…

  He let the sea into his lungs. He swallowed it gratefully. There was nothing but peace in this realm.

  Spewing mouthfuls of water, Dagny struggled to the wheel where Hector and Youx both fought to right the helm. Men glided across the deck on waterfalls, crashing against the longboat, which they proceeded to unlash with frantic speed. Dagny had almost gained the wheel when someone gripped her shoulders, digging fingers into her flesh and hurtling her back upon the skylight.

  “You must get below!” Broadhecker spat mouthfuls of water on Dagny’s face, rain streaming from his myriad of tiny braids. “This is no place for a lady!”

 

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