by Trevor Hoyle
‘We need more illumination,’ the doctor said, pulling the blanket aside to examine the woman. Her breathing was hoarse and ragged, and she was running with sweat.
‘I have just this one small lamp,’ the husband bleated, holding up a feeble yellow glow.
‘Get more, man. Shape to it. Your wife is near her time.’ The husband scuttled off Doctor Chapman turned to Saraheda. ‘See if you can find something for the afterbirth. Any kind of receptacle will do. And, if there’s hot water, bring a panful.’
Saraheda gripped the woman’s hand. She opened her eyes, cloudy with pain, and Saraheda smiled down at her. ‘We’ll take good care of you. The doctor is here. You’ll soon be fine.’
She went in search of hot water. It was a struggle to get through the gangways, which were piled high with sacks and bundles. Faces peered up at her out of the dimness. Voices whispered and murmured. Somebody was singing in a slurred, drunken drawl. It had all the elements, and atmosphere, of a phantasm. Had she known it would be like this, she would have gladly paid Doctor Chapman his fee twice over not to endure it.
But, now she was here, Saraheda resolved to do her utmost.
Dancing shadows, thrown by a small fire, drew her to a ledge on which bodies lay. There was hardly room to sit up, let alone stand. A blackened cooking pot hung over the flames. Steam drifted up.
‘Pardon me.’ Saraheda shook the shadowy reclining form. ‘I have need of hot water for a woman in labour. Is it possible that you could spare –’
Awakening from a heavy slumber, the man grunted and cleared phlegm from his throat, then shifted his weight and let out a rasping fart.
Saraheda raised her scarf to her face.
‘Warrisit? What d’yer want?’ He sounded to be in a stupor. He heaved himself up, wiping spittle from his lips. His bleary eyes focused on the woman. ‘Warrisit you want? Eh? Holy Mary, you’re a fetching piece of stuff. Come for a poke?’
‘She wants hot water, Franklin,’ a young voice said. ‘Strike a bargain with ‘er. You might get a poke in return.’
From behind the man’s shoulder there came a cackle of laughter, and Saraheda glimpsed the boy who had attacked Daniel, mouth split wide in a grin of yellow, carious teeth.
‘Climb up, sweetheart,’ the man grunted, ‘and join the happy circle. Edge over, Six-Fingered Sam, m’lad, give the lady room.’
He smiled lazily over his shoulder at the boy. Then suddenly his hand shot out and fastened on Saraheda’s wrist. He pulled her towards him roughly, at the same time thrusting his face forward, eyes bloodshot, his breath a cloud of hot, foul gas. Wet lips slobbered against her cheek.
‘Climb up and I’ll give you a big, hard keepsake. Here, feel it, honey-cup. Got a nice warm purse to put it in?’
‘Let go of me, please.’ Saraheda’s wrist was chafed by the man’s rough palm.
‘Don’t believe I will.’ His other hand plucked the scarf aside. His eyes grew large and round. One of them was dead and glassy, with a layer of skin over it. He licked his lips greedily. ‘I spy a couple of grand turnips down there – God’s teeth, this is a strapping woman, Sam, m’lad. Fit as a butcher’s dog.’
Saraheda raised her eyebrows. ‘You’d like to be thrilled?’
‘Yus, if you please, ma’am!’
The man yowled as Saraheda slid the long hat pin from the tail of her scarf and stuck it straight into his arm. His skull hitting the bulkhead was like the hollow bong of a church bell. Six-Fingered Sam shrieked and giggled. He shut up as a fist hit him in the teeth.
Saraheda went on, ignoring the string of abuse shouted after her along the dark gangway. She pulled her scarf close to her body with trembling fingers.
A hand reached out and touched her, and she almost screamed.
She fumbled for the hat pin, but couldn’t find it. A shape rose up, a tall silhouette, and she vaguely made out a raised palm.
‘Forgive me, you are startled. I’m sorry, forgive my clumsiness. Do you require help? Are you lost?’
‘I need some hot water for a woman – over there – in childbirth. Do you know where I can get some?’
‘Surely at once. Of course. I can help you.’
The man’s voice was stilted and halting, as if each word had to be pondered over. Saraheda realised why now, seeing glistening brown eyes in a dark-brown, sensitive face. He was Indian, tall and very slender, with lustrous black hair splayed over his shoulders.
‘Come with me. Along here. We shall go together.’
Saraheda followed him. He moved easily and gracefully, seeming almost to flow through the cramped spaces. She had difficulty keeping up. An Indian off to the New World! That was a rare novelty: an ancient culture confronting a pioneering frontier.
The Indian led her to the galley, a bedlam of smoke and heat and confusion. Without pausing, he cut through the milling chaos of people. They went on squabbling among themselves, while the Indian quietly and calmly did what he had to do, and within minutes had organised hot water in a large copper pan. No one paid any attention to him.
Almost as if, Saraheda thought, they hadn’t even seen him.
His name, she learnt, was Satish Kumar. He had lived in England for five years. Before that he had wandered through Europe, learning different languages and absorbing diverse cultures. He spoke seven languages, not including four Indian dialects.
He said to her, his face long and serious, ‘Stay away from that man – the one with the dead eye. His name is Franklin Kershalton. He is a convicted murderer –’
‘A murderer! Are you certain?’
Satish Kumar nodded. ‘He boasts about the deed. I listen to him and his small friend, Six Fingers, talking in the night. Kershalton was on the gallows, about to be hanged, and in the final minute he was saved.’
‘How was he saved? By whom?’
‘I have not learnt how it happened. Nor the reason why.’ They moved back through the crowded lower deck, the Indian carrying the copper pan in his cupped hands. ‘He had no choice but to flee the country, and take the first ship leaving port. It is bad karma that it should be this one.’
‘Karma? What’s that?’ Saraheda asked curiously.
‘Bad fortune. Or, as you would say, unfortunate.’
‘Yes,’ Saraheda said, reflecting. ‘Perhaps the captain ought to be informed of Kershalton’s history,’ she suggested. ‘A murderer loose on his ship …’
Something had been niggling at her. Now it struck home as Satish Kumar placed the pan of water, still bubbling and steaming, by the doctor’s side. She touched the rim of the pan, and it nearly blistered her finger. Yet the Indian had carried the boiling water in his bare hands. She glanced down and saw that his pale palms were completely smooth and unblemished.
Then she became preoccupied and forgot about it as the woman’s pains started to come strong and fast. The baby was delivered not long after, a boy, raw-skinned and shiny, slithering out on to the straw like a fat red eel.
And, when Saraheda looked round again, the Indian had gone.
6
Cawdor stood gazing out at the dark ocean. It was a warm night, the wind balmy and soft, and the oppressive closeness below had driven him up on deck. The gentle motion of the Salamander was barely perceptible through these placid southern waters.
He turned his head at a sound, and in the deeper shadow of the quarterdeck thought he saw movement. He stepped forward, peering into the darkness. Smiling to himself, Cawdor tiptoed closer.
‘What secret rituals are these in the dead of night, sir!’
Gilbert Gryble jumped, nearly upsetting his apparatus. ‘Holy Saints, Jefferson, pray don’t creep up like that! I thought it was those mad zealots with the shaven domes.’ He patted his chest with a fluttering hand. ‘Nearly expired of a seizure.’
‘An excellent night for star-gazing, Gilbert,’ Cawdor said jovially. ‘Have you discovered Gryble’s planet yet?’
‘For that I need to make exact observations, which are not possible on ship. No, m
y purpose is to compute the alignment of the Great Bear. You see it, there? At these latitudes it is dropping near to the horizon. And, just below, the Polar Star itself.’ He went on, his voice quivering with enthusiasm, ‘But these are ideal conditions, very excellent! I believe I could discover a new body with the naked eye!’
‘The stars do look larger,’ Cawdor granted, looking at the magnificent spread of light above the black line of the ocean. ‘Brighter too. Is it true, or a trick of sight?’
‘Partly true, I think,’ Gryble said, adjusting the angle of his astrolabe and squinting along its brass pointers. ‘The atmosphere is gentler and seems to sharpen their rays. Each star has its distinct colour, you will observe. See there, the fat blue one. It is named Rigel, in the constellation of Orion.’
‘At what distance is that from the Earth?’
‘We cannot know, at present. We have no device to measure the particles of light travelling from such a distant object.’ Gryble turned the astrolabe to another quadrant of sky. ‘John Michell, a very profound scholar of physical nature, has postulated that some of the bodies in the heavens are of such great mass that their light is entrapped, and cannot escape. Thus they remain invisible to us.’
Cawdor frowned as he grappled with this concept. ‘Stars blazing light but remaining invisible? How so? Surely we should see them?’
‘Not according to Michell. Light is emitted, but is then made to return towards its source by the star’s own proper gravity. Providing the star is of a certain density and diameter, that is. Michell computes it as exceeding that of our sun in the proportion of five hundred to one.’ Gryble folded the instrument and fitted it into a leather case. “These bodies would be black in the night sky, and thus rendered invisible.’
‘Is light a material thing, then?’ Cawdor asked, baffled.
‘According to Newton it is certainly affected by gravity, which, as far as we know, is a universal law of nature, affecting all things, including particles of light.’
‘Fiery objects in the heavens that cannot be seen…’ Cawdor mused, shaking his head. ‘On quick reflection, I think I’ll stick with stonemasonry and architecture. Mundane earthbound subjects, but which a man can grasp with both hands. Your study is too ethereal for me.’
Gilbert Gryble smiled as he collected his bits and pieces together.
‘There are men in the Colonies with newer theories, enough to boggle the brain. Have you heard of Benjamin Franklin?’
Cawdor admitted he hadn’t.
‘The greatest scientific genius of the age,’ Gryble pronounced emphatically. ‘He has harnessed and transmuted the elemental forces of lightning and thunder, to be used for practical purposes. I hope to make the gentleman’s acquaintance and learn to be a genius, too.’ He chuckled. ‘Us men of science are the coming breed.’
He bade Cawdor good night and traipsed off with his paraphernalia.
Cawdor strolled about the deck, fully alert, his mind filled with a thousand whirling thoughts and fancies. He paused under the mainsail, whose edge cut a curving swathe through the blaze of stars, and climbed up into the lower rigging. He lay back at an angle, feet securely planted, arms outspread, resting in a cradle of rope.
The ship rocked slowly from side to side. The stars slid up and then drifted down with its gentle, rhythmic motion. Cawdor became lost and dazzled in them, their brazen splendour; his senses swam and seemed to leave his body, flying outward and upward…
Perhaps Gryble had something. What a study it would make! Their majestic brilliance dwarfed everything else. Their sheer audacity put man in his proper place – an insignificant, squabbling speck with delusions of grandeur.
A woman moaned and made a low, guttural noise – it seemed directly beneath Cawdor’s feet. A man grunted, grunted again, and the grunts flowed into a steady, regular syncopation. Again the woman moaned, but louder this time.
Spread-eagled above them in the rigging, Cawdor lay absolutely still and quiet. His chest shook and his stomach ached as he fought to contain the bubbling laughter within. If he moved he would disturb the lovebirds, but if he stayed where he was he would be forced to eavesdrop on their crescendo of passion, and its inevitable climax.
He decided that silence was the better course. Let them get on with it uninterrupted and finish in their own good time, which, judging from the sounds they were making, wasn’t far off.
Cawdor chewed savagely at his lower lip. He mustn’t laugh out loud. No. He would not laugh. How would he himself like it, to be secretly observed in such a delicate situation?
He bit into his lip, almost drawing blood, as a gust of stifled laughter shot down his nose. It sounded to him like the whinnying of a hysterical nag. He held his breath, quivering inside, and then let out a sigh of relief when the noises continued without abatement.
Even if he’d yelled at the top of his voice, it seemed doubtful to Cawdor they would have noticed.
The couple were lost to the world, and it came as much of a shock to them, as it did to Cawdor, when a gaunt figure launched itself from out of the shadows, took the man by the hair, and wrenched him bodily away from the woman.
Faint starlight gleamed on a shaven skull. Eye sockets like black cavernous pits. Lined cheeks and thin compressed mouth, tight as a scar. The leader, or spokesman, of the Shouters flung the man down as if he were a piece of carrion. The stern, granite head was raised up, and for a moment Cawdor thought his presence, suspended above them in the rigging, had been detected. But the leader was looking from the crouching man to the partly disrobed girl cowering in the shadows.
For several moments the figures below remained totally still, as if frozen in a tableau. Then the girl made a pathetic whimpering sound, like that of a frightened animal.
‘Paul. Elizabeth –’ the voice was toneless and drab, and yet there was a thin, sneering undercurrent to it ‘– your carnal desires have been apparent to us for some time. Every glance, every touch of hands, every unspoken communication. Noted and set down in permanent record. And now you both have sinned in deed as well as in thought.’
‘But we are to be married, Elder Graye. You know that we are already betrothed, Elizabeth and me.’ The young man was on his knees, hands clasped together in a writhing knot. ‘I beg your mercy. Do not punish us. Show forgiveness, I implore you –’
‘It is not for me to forgive. The law is the law and none shall rise above it. You have knowingly broken the commandment to which you both pledged yourselves, hearts and souls, signed in blood. Is that not a fact?’
‘For pity’s sake, Elder Graye, I beseech you to –’
‘Is that not a fact?’
The shrill words pierced like a dagger-point. Cawdor himself felt a sharp pain in the centre of his forehead. The young man gasped and covered his ears. The girl cried out as if struck in the face.
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
This from both the man and the girl, an urgent, terrified litany of confession, of guilt.
Elder Graye pressed his outspread hand to the young man’s bowed head. ‘Pray with all your might that your sins will be forgiven. Cast out thoughts of sensual pleasure. Reject the weakness of the flesh. Do penance and seek contrition within your heart. Be gone!’
Cawdor watched the young man stumble off into the darkness. With trembling hands the girl tried to cover herself. Her shoulders were bare, her white breasts exposed. Her fingers fumbled uselessly with the strings of her bodice.
‘Your sin is much the greater than his, Elizabeth,’ Elder Graye rebuked her stonily, ‘because you have wantonly employed your body to entice his manhood and encourage his lechery. You have tempted him with a lustful display of those female parts that quicken a man’s nature and cause a portion of him to be engorged with blood. I hope and pray that you have no knowledge of such intimate bodily processes.’
He moved closer, looming over her. ‘I hope and pray you have not seen it grow, and touched with your hand the monstrous thing in its full extended state. But if so, Elizabe
th, I instruct you now to purge your sin.’ His voice sharpened accusingly. ‘Have you, child?’
The girl let out a shuddering sigh. ‘Aye, sir. I do confess it.’
Elder Graye shook his shaven head. ‘I am woefully sad to hear this, Elizabeth. A young, tender, innocent girl soiling herself with such loathsome depravity. Have you no shame, child?’
Elizabeth trembled. She gazed at him, stricken and dumb, tears rolling down her cheeks.
She flinched as Elder Graye placed his hand on her shoulder. He said soothingly, ‘I do not mean to be unkind. It is for your own good that I chastise you, Elizabeth. But, if I am to help you, you must have faith in me. You must trust me.’ His hand slid down and took hold of her breast, squeezing and moulding it with his long fingers. The girl stood rigid, her throat working.
‘You see, child, breasts as full and ripe as these are a sore temptation to man, to his lustful fantasies. Note how your nipple stiffens and rises when it is toyed with… your body responds to a firm touch, does it not? You feel yourself grow hot and excited when a hand caresses you here, and here, and lower still… here… and you become wet, as I feel you now becoming.’
The thin, dry hands roamed everywhere, exploring every part of her body. The girl tried to move, but she was trapped, stifled, smothered by the crushing weight pressing against her.
‘Sir, please don’t… I cannot breathe.’
‘Your soft body betrays you, Elizabeth. Your juices flow. This corruption of flesh and depravity of thought must be rooted out and cast away –’
The words were strangled in his throat. Elder Graye started to choke. He clawed at the arm locked tight round his windpipe. Cawdor increased the pressure, bending the long body backward, and backward still further, until it seemed the backbone would snap.
Elder Graye staggered back and went sprawling full length on the deck, choking and gasping for breath.
