Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan’s heart was a cold, heavy stone as he paced along the bodies. He had grown up in the Hebrides with men of the sea, his own beloved grandfather had been one, and he knew most to be bold souls who embraced the rigors and joys of the mariner’s life with equal zest. These men would never again hold the hands of wives and lovers, never again embrace daughters and sons. All that they ever were and ever hoped to be had been snatched away by cowards who had lit a fuse in the bowels of their ship because of a parcel cut from Jonathan Pine’s chest. A cold, helpless rage was building inside Duncan against the anonymous killers who had lit their spark in the night and fled.

  “God was looking the other way when this happened,” came a tight voice at his side. Munro too looked out over the grisly line of death. “The peace of the running wave to you,” he murmured in Gaelic, “and the peace of shining stars.” It was a Scottish prayer for mariners. The old Scot was a hard-boiled, practical man, but his eyes often betrayed a contemplative spirit.

  Duncan stepped on, pausing by a red-haired man much his own age who wore a little bunch of dried heather on a leather thong around his neck and a sash of plaid around his waist. He knelt for a moment, pushing the hair out of the dead man’s eyes. “Cadal ann an sith mo bhrathair,” he whispered to the Highlander. Sleep in peace, my brother. He felt the cool gaze of the onlookers and studied them. It was not simply fear of the dead he saw on their faces. These too were people of the sea. Fishermen, lobstermen, clam haulers, and boatwrights. They had not come as scavengers. They wore somber clothing, their Sabbath clothing, and had come to bear witness to the death of fellow mariners. As he watched, a handful stepped out of the ranks and began following his example, straightening the dead and pulling away the seaweed that covered some of their faces.

  Suddenly a woman screamed. Another swooned and collapsed onto the man beside her. Several in the crowd pointed excitedly toward the water. Duncan spun about to see a hand rising up out of the water fifty yards offshore, shaking, rising, the arm making struggling movements toward the shoreline. He had unbuttoned his waistcoat and was about to kick off his shoes when the arm abruptly shifted direction and began wrenching back and forth. He saw now the gray fin four feet behind it. The shark was large and relishing the meal offered by one of the drifting bodies. Seagulls reeled overhead and dove for the gobbets of flesh in the water.

  Duncan found himself advancing toward the water in mincing steps, without conscious effort. He did not know the man, but knew him to be a fellow voyager of the sea, and knew the bond between those who experienced the rage and beauty of the earth far from safe shores. Being ripped apart by such a beast was the common nightmare of all such men.

  A hand clamped around his arm. “No, my friend. He is beyond your help.” Conawago fixed Duncan with a weary but determined gaze. “There’s more than enough death on these shores already.”

  Duncan made no response, just kept staring at the shark. The old Nipmuc maintained his tight grip until finally, as the thrashing in the water subsided, Duncan retreated to the dry sand. “Men die like this in war,” Duncan said, “but in war they knowingly face the risk of death. These men had no chance to fight, no chance even to pray. They were homeward bound, in sight of a safe haven at last, the trials of their journey behind them.” He gazed at the rows of dead. “It’s cruel hard, Conawago. The king must make the vermin who did this swing from the gallows.”

  “It’s cruel hard,” the Nipmuc echoed.

  The wind ebbed for a moment, and they could hear both the orders being shouted in the navy launches sweeping the wreckage grounds and the weeping prayers of those who had begun tending the dead. The two men tilted their heads in the direction of a clump of twisted spruce trees that grew hard in a patch of rocky shoreline.

  “ ‘Farewell and adieu to ye ladies of Spain . . .’ ” came a tiny voice cracking with grief. They pushed through the brush to see a boy with shaggy black hair, knee-deep in the water, fending off a small shark with a shattered oar as he retrieved something from the bay.

  “ ‘We’ll rant and we’ll roar across the salt sea,’ ” he hoarsely sang as he turned back to the beach, paying no mind to the sharks circling behind him, less than a stone’s throw away.

  Duncan darted to his side, pulling him free of the water. “Lad, don’t bait the monsters,” he warned. “You mustn’t go into—” His words choked away as the boy dropped what he was carrying. It was a human foot, severed at the ankle.

  The boy spoke with his head bowed as he pointed to the foot, which had only four toes. “I think I know him,” he said of the foot. “Jesus Fusca, the Portugee, who lost his little toe to frostbite on a whaling trip to the ice sea.” He looked up at Duncan with empty eyes. “Is that a Portuguese foot? Most of the others I can make a better guess at.”

  “Others?” Conawago asked.

  The boy, who could be no more than twelve years old, made an absent gesture down the spit of sand. “My friends,” he declared.

  Duncan shuddered. The boy was pointing toward bloody arms, legs, hands, and one head lying in a row along the tideline, some being pecked at by fish crows and gulls. He indicated the first three of the body parts. “That tattoo of the dolphin, that’s Ezekiel Grant, the cutlass scar on the leg, that’s Peter Fife, who once fought pirates. And that ring with the cross,” he continued in an empty voice, “that’s my friend Adam.”

  Conawago grabbed the boy, wrapped his arms around him, and pressed him against his chest. The boy weakly resisted for a moment, then began silently sobbing.

  Duncan picked up a handful of pebbles and began throwing them at the birds that scavenged among the boy’s grisly salvage. He walked to the end of the row of body parts, scattering the birds, then turned toward the water as an officer roared through a speaking trumpet at a dory that rowed too close. “No farther, or we shoot!” Duncan heard with surprise, and saw the officer in the launch direct two marines to raise their muskets. Why was the navy so vehement about protecting the site of a wrecked merchant ship?

  The dory was slow to respond, and the two muskets roared, hitting, as they were aimed, the gunwale near the waterline. Wood splintered at the impact of the balls, and the man at the dory’s tiller responded with a sharp turn and a sharper curse.

  Conawago was sitting with the boy on a driftwood log when Duncan returned. The Nipmuc introduced the youth. “This is Will Sterret, Duncan, ship’s boy on the Arcturus.”

  The dark lump that was Duncan’s heart lightened for an instant. The death count had gone down by one. He sat on the sand before the boy. “I was seven years old, Will, when one of my grandfather’s sloops went down off the Hebrides with all hands, most of them my cousins. My grandfather didn’t sleep until he had accounted for all the bodies. I was with him much of the time, cruising where the currents took the bodies, then coming into shore with the corpses to the wails of their families. My grandfather said that when the sea means for a man to feel her embrace, she will never be denied.”

  “T’weren’t the sea who took ’em,” the boy replied in a choked whisper. “T’was the demons who stuck a flint on a fuse.” The words, and the boy’s desolate stare, twisted Duncan’s heart. Then, as they sank in, Duncan and Conawago exchanged a surprised glance.

  “My friend Conawago here and I spent last night with the body of Jonathan Pine,” he said. “Did you know him?”

  Will slowly nodded. “ ‘Flee,’ Jonathan told me,” the boy said. “ ‘Launch yourself over the rail in a long dive like I taught you in the Azores. No time to raise the alarm. Just save yerself and stroke for the shore,’ he said, ‘and don’t stop there. Make for Boston and Mr. Hancock and tell what happened.’ Then he cursed me for lingering. I was nearly onshore when she exploded.” His voice drifted away for a moment. “Then I ran like a demon and finally collapsed and hid under a fallen log until it was safe. I did not go to Boston, I came back to find Jonathan. I thought I saw his body and pulled it to shore, but it wasn’t him, it was the third mate. Then there was the carpent
er, and the cook, and another, and another. I guess I didn’t really think they would all die.”

  “You should go to your family, boy,” Conawago said. “Leave this to us.”

  “My uncle is all I have left. He wants us to pay off in Boston and buy a little pinnace, then sail it down east to the Maine country. Says we will start a sheep farm like my grandparents had once in Cornwall. He’s keen as mustard about it, and is working the accounts to see how many ewes our coin might fetch.”

  “A good plan,” Conawago declared with a nod. “We can get you to him. Where is he?”

  “Not far.” The boy looked down the beach with an empty expression. “I lost count. I think his was the fifteenth body I pulled out, maybe sixteen or seventeen. All of his hand bitten off except the thumb. Some shark has my grandfather’s silver ring in his belly.”

  The brittle silence was broken by a shout from another dory that had ventured close to the navy boats. The wind minced the words, but Duncan could hear “Godless devils!” and “Rot in hell!” coming from the dory. Its occupants were not interested in salvage. A solitary man rowed while another, in austere black clothing, stood in the bow shaking his fist at the king’s sailors.

  As Duncan watched, a middle-aged woman ran into the water, shouting frantically, gesturing the dory back. The marines raised their muskets.

  “Why do they do that?” Duncan wondered out loud.

  “We thought the navy was trying to help, to recover more of the bodies before the sea wolves took them,” the boy said in a hollow voice. His strength and spirit were drained. “But they ain’t keeping them.”

  “I don’t understand,” Duncan said, then followed the boy’s hand as he pointed toward the closest launch. A body, sprawled across the gunwale, was being searched by the officer in charge. As Duncan watched, the officer straightened and snapped an order, and the body was dumped over the side.

  “Defilers!” the man standing in the dory shouted as he shook his fist again. “Spawn of the devil!”

  The officer looked at the man with obvious disinterest, then gestured to his marines. The two muskets fired, and wood splintered on the dory’s hull. As the dory retreated, the man in the bow still shouted his curses.

  “Tell me something, Will,” Conawago asked in a contemplative voice. “What did you mean when you said you ran until you were safe? Surely you were safe once you touched the land.”

  The grime on the boy’s face was streaked with tears shed over the past hours, but his eyes were red and dry. He had no more tears left. “I called out when I touched the sand, grateful that they had reached the shore, too.”

  Duncan knelt by the boy and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Men from the Arcturus? You mean there were others who escaped?”

  “They were rowing away already when I dove off the rail, but I’m sure it was the captain’s little skiff, the one with the brightwork he’s so proud of. They disappeared around that long spit,” the boy explained, pointing to a pine-covered tongue of land that jutted into the bay a quarter mile to the north. “I had recognized Mr. Oliver by the light of the flames—my friend the boatswain’s mate—so I called his name and began running toward them, but he stopped and yelled at me. ‘Run, Will!’ he shouted. ‘Run and hide!’ Then the others hit him and shoved him forward like he was their prisoner. I was confused, ’cause I thought they was all friends, so I followed, real careful like. They went into that line of trees, and I quickened my pace so as not to lose them. Then came a terrible Indian war cry and a scream. I ran in the other direction and hid like Mr. Oliver said.”

  “A war cry?” asked Conawago. “How could you know of such a thing?”

  “Oh, Mr. Oliver, he was a great Indian fighter in the war with the French, one of those amazing rangers. Sometimes on fair-weather nights we would sit on deck and listen to his tales. He would act out pieces of them and always give that bloodcurdling cry when he told of the attacks of the savages. At first I thought Mr. Jonathan would take offense, seeing how he was of the tribes, but he just laughed and said Mr. Oliver was a good mockingbird. He said if I ever heard that sound in the real world, I must run, because it meant death was stalking near.”

  “So you mean you heard Mr. Oliver from the shadows?” Duncan asked.

  “I don’t think so. It seemed of a higher pitch, and angrier. I don’t know. I told you, I ran, and hid ’til first light.”

  “So it was two of the other crewmen you saw with him?” Conawago probed.

  “Not crew. The passengers from Halifax.”

  Conawago and Duncan rose at the same instant, both studying the point of land with the eyes of frontier scouts. Duncan realized that his hand had gone to his knife. It was impossible that there would be raiding warriors on Boston harbor, but clearly the boy had heard something that had given him a deep fright. And if men had been fleeing the ship before Will, they must have known about the fuse, even been the ones who lit it.

  “ ’Hoy the shore!” boomed a voice behind them. Duncan turned to see the little ketch that Hancock used to visit his warehouses in Salem and Portsmouth. Munro was running to their gig as the ketch lowered its anchor.

  “Stay here,” Duncan said to Conawago and the boy, then trotted down the beach. He leapt onto the gig as it was coasting off the sand, and five minutes later they nudged the side of the ketch.

  “Just needed a quick ferry to shore, Duncan,” Hancock declared. Robert Livingston stepped out of the small cabin.

  “No,” Duncan replied, and pointed toward the two-masted naval cutter that was directing the searches. “The prince of the Boston merchants and the owner of the lost vessel are going to consult with the authorities,” he said, and motioned them to climb down into the smaller boat.

  “I don’t see that—” Livingston began, but he was cut off by Duncan.

  “We have little time,” Duncan told him, “and you need to get me to the officer in charge. They won’t stop us when they recognize the two of you.”

  By the time they were within hailing distance of the cutter, the two launches had flanked them, marines with muskets at the ready. “You intrude in the business of His Majesty’s Navy!” barked the lieutenant at the rail of the cutter. “If you have inquiries, the commandant at Castle Island will be happy to entertain them, I’m sure.”

  “I am Mr. Hancock of the Boston merchants, and the Arcturus was owned by my friend here, Mr. Livingston of New York,” Hancock called out, quickly grasping his role. “She was carrying important cargo destined for my warehouses. This is where we need to make our inquiries. Our insurance association will need notifications and certifications.”

  Hancock’s words caught the officer by surprise, and he looked back down the deck as if for an answer. “Then surely where you need to be, gentlemen, is with that association,” he replied. “We will supply the required paperwork in due course.”

  “We will learn what you have learned, sir,” Hancock replied in a well-practiced peremptory voice. “Lower your ladder.”

  The lieutenant seemed distracted as Hancock, Livingston, and Duncan climbed onto his deck, his eyes shifting again and again to the launches and to another officer standing at the cutter’s stern rail. He finally took notice that his junior officers had assembled in a line, as if to welcome high-ranking visitors, and he dismissed them with an awkward gesture.

  Livingston did not wait for introductions. “What is the news of my vessel, sir?” he demanded.

  The lieutenant glanced again toward the figure at the rail. “The Arcturus suffered a grievous misfortune. An overturned lantern perhaps, or a seaman careless with the ashes of his pipe. She is no more.”

  “And the noble souls who manned her?” Hancock asked.

  The officer gestured over the water. “See for yourself. They have surrendered to eternity.”

  Duncan kept an eye on the nearest launch. It had thrown out a grappling hook to haul another body on board. He watched as the dead man was spread like a side of beef over the gunwale and the officer in ch
arge ripped open his shirt, touched his pockets, then motioned to the two seamen who steadied it for him. They upended the man, headfirst, back into the sea.

  “Christ on the cross!” Duncan spat. “You recover them from oblivion only to toss them back into it!” He could not contain his anger. “These were fathers and sons and brothers! Show some compassion!”

  The figure from the stern was at the lieutenant’s side now. The tall, dour man also wore the uniform of a naval lieutenant, though it seemed strangely new, bearing none of the blemishes from tar and salt that were inevitable at sea. “His Majesty’s Navy has a duty to investigate maritime incidents,” he declared in an aloof tone. He stepped forward and fixed Duncan with an inquisitive gaze, his long, aquiline nose raised in the manner of a predator fixing the scent of its next meal. “Not run a damned charnel house.”

  “You are feeding men to the sharks.”

  “While we are the most potent force on the oceans, sir, I admit that we have yet to find a way to subdue the wolves of the sea. The dead receive their due. Have you not observed that the current is casting them onto shore?”

  “In bits and pieces,” Duncan shot back. He had taken an instant dislike to the haughty officer. “What are you searching for?”

  The tall lieutenant winced, as if he had bitten something sour, then turned to Hancock. “You must teach your servants better manners, sir, before bringing them onto a king’s ship.”

  “Mr. McCallum is not my servant,” Hancock replied in a level voice.

  The officer repeated the name with oily disdain. “McCallum. Should have known. Another Highland heathen.”

  “Mr. McCallum assists us with the insurance survey,” Livingston asserted, and stepped between Duncan and the officer.

  “I am sure Lieutenant Beck meant no offense, sir,” the cutter’s commander nervously injected. “It has been a stressful day for all of us.” Lieutenant Beck, Duncan realized, was an outsider, not part of the cutter’s regular crew.