Blackwell's Homecoming (Blackwell's Adventures Book 3)

by V. E. Ulett

  “What are you called?” Saunders asked the young woman. “Not what that brute’s been calling you. Your real name that your Momma used.”

  “Anushka. Little Anushka, she used to say.”

  Aloka dove into the surf. He wanted to stop the sound of the pain in that woman’s voice, drown the recollection of the words exchanged with his brother, and wash the sick and despairing feelings away in the clean sea.

  In the cabin of Albion they heard the officer of the watch hailing a boat, and then the thump of the craft against the ship’s side. Blackwell emerged on deck a few moments later, having left the women in the cabin wringing their hands. Peering down into the native craft Blackwell saw neither Aloka or Saunders.

  One of the kanakas looked kindly up into Blackwell’s face and said, “He comes this way, kupuna kāne,” and pointed his paddle. It was a respectful address, but Blackwell didn’t care for being named grandfather by any old sod. He gazed out over the water. His eyesight was not what it once was, for he did not see Aloka in the water until he was quite close to the ship.

  Blackwell retreated to the quarterdeck, to preserve his dignity. Aloka swam alongside, pulled himself out of the water and came up the entry steps. Once on deck he did not throw his head back and shake himself like a dog in his accustomed manner. In fact there was something in Aloka’s bearing that made Blackwell throw aside reserve and hasten over to him.

  Aloka’s clothes and shoes were handed up from the canoe. Once dressed Aloka said, “Good evening, sir. May I have a word?”

  Blackwell nodded and motioned to the quarterdeck. As Aloka passed him, he stopped suddenly, reached out and pulled Blackwell into an embrace.

  Aloka clung to him, and when they disengaged it required some moments of pacing together, on the weather side of the quarterdeck, before either one was composed enough to speak.

  “I told the old chiefs I would do it, ” he said quietly. “I met George.”

  For several steps Aloka paced with bowed head.

  “I feel I have to. There is something wrong with George, like Kuanoa, using his women most brutally. He has an astonishing sense of entitlement, never asked after the fate of the men who followed him into battle. He is—″ Aloka made that gesture of pulling up his collar, but with a revolted look upon his face “—wicked.”

  They stopped in their pacing and faced one another. Blackwell knew a thing or two about evil, from past experience.

  “Mad dogs must be put down, son.”

  Aloka nodded once and glanced away, clenching his jaw.

  “Will you...will you come with me, the day it is to be done?”

  Aloka asked nothing improper. It would not be amiss for Britain’s consul general to attend aboard the Hawaiian king’s ship. The execution would be an affair of state.

  He put his hand on Aloka’s shoulder. “If you want me there, I shall be.”

  Aloka let out a breath and sagged a moment under his hand. Then he said something that startled Blackwell.

  “Thank you, Father. I’m so afraid.”

  His son turned and they resumed their pacing. Aloka had been in any number of sea battles, boarding parties, and cutting out expeditions. He had the courage of a young lion and had killed in the service of his country. This was different, of course, it was his half-brother. And it was not battle, but a cold killing with the other man disarmed and helpless. Blackwell was still puzzled by Aloka’s words, and the emotion in his voice.

  “What if,” Aloka said, very low. “What if George was made that way because of his parentage?”

  Blackwell was astonished, not least because he immediately found himself prepared to urge that Aloka and Emma’s offspring should not be monsters of iniquity.

  “You cannot give way to those kinds of thoughts,” Blackwell said. “You must simply live life, accept what comes. The way you have accepted this hard duty about George.”

  Aloka looked down at the deck, and then straight at Blackwell.

  “He had the temerity to speak of our women. At that moment I wanted to stop his breath forever.” Aloka shuddered, and then with an effort squared his shoulders. “We must not keep the ladies waiting longer.”

  The sight of Mercedes and her gentle manner toward him brought a great choking lump into Aloka’s throat. He remembered how he used to hide his head in her skirts and weep, when he’d been wounded as a boy. He would like to have done so now, to feel the reassuring stroke of her hand on his hair. Aloka hurried Emma into the native craft and away to Blonde, barely able to exchange more than a greeting with Mercedes, and certainly not speaking to her of that poor wretched young woman left ashore.

  His sole object was to regain the familiarity of the British man-of-war, and more especially his little private den. Once undressed and swinging gently in his cot, with Emma beside him, Aloka unburdened his heart. But though he did tell her of Anushka’s desertion, George’s more lubricious proposals he could not bring himself to relate. Aloka hoped that Emma, and Mercedes, should never so much as look on his half-brother George.

  “It is a terrible duty has fallen on you,” Emma said, “and I shall certainly do something for this woman. It might have been me, depending on the favor of strangers, had they succeeded in Brazil.”

  “Don’t...” Aloka unclenched his teeth. “Don’t speak of it, my love. I cannot bear to think of you ... I grieve for my part in almost allowing you to be taken.”

  Emma pressed closer against his side. She began to caress his chest, and as her questing hand moved lower Aloka caught it up in a firm grasp. He was so oppressed he could not even seek solace in her flesh. There needed to be some joy in his heart for that, and at the moment there was none.

  “Just let me hold you.”

  She asked him, not in a pushing manner, whether Captain Blackwell would accompany him when it came time to carry out the sentence, and whether she must not.

  “Father has consented to be a witness on behalf of government, and you must certainly go on shore with your Mama.”

  He took a great shuddering breath, and wiped tears from his face. She kissed him tenderly, saying nothing, and lay back down against his chest.

  When he’d recovered somewhat, Aloka said, “I desire you would not even see the ship off. Oh Emma! I wish I could just lie here with you, and never turn out again.”

  Thirteen

  A strong breeze out of the North came up on the day the sentence was to be carried out against George Kaumuarii. The barometer had fallen steadily for the last twelve hours, but Aloka was obliged to turn out in command of the sloop Kamehameha I. His usually cheerful face had taken on a grave and stern expression not unlike Captain Blackwell’s. Aloka had filled the intervening days working with the crew of Kamehameha I, getting used to their ways and they to him.

  He had to learn a new vocabulary of commands as expressed in Hawaiian, and Aloka wished he’d started sooner. Kokua na kelamoku apau, all hands on deck; ho‘alu aku i ka lau, slacken the sheets. Kamehameha I’s crew could nearly all pass for able seamen, but naturally the native men were no where near Royal Navy style where discipline and organization were considered. Secretly, Aloka had been glad to get away from the island on sail handling exercises. He was guilty as well, for having thrown Emma so much upon her own devices. In these last days Aloka’s strongest desire had been to put distance between himself and his half-brother, and the wretched duty ahead.

  Aloka had not left Emma alone overnight, of course, always returning in the evenings to the little wood house alongside the London Missionary society church. The previous occupants Ka‘ahumanu had unceremoniously ejected in their favor. It had at first been assumed by the local ali‘i that they should all be living together, Captain Blackwell and Aloka and their wives. But Captain Blackwell made it clear the idea did not suit, and he’d taken Mercedes to a half finished stone and wood dwelling that was building far up the slope of Diamond Head. The only small glimmer of gratification Aloka had in those unsettled, uncomfortable days was in having found
a berth for George’s brutalized wife Anushka.

  “Saunders knows a thing or two about abuse,” Mercedes had said. “She was so badly used in Antigua, she told me she never could have children. If anyone can help Anushka recover it would be Saunders, and Saunders is willing she should stay as long as she needs to.”

  God bless Saunders, Aloka thought. The one flicker of goodness in an appalling sequence of events that was by no means over.

  Albion’s boat touched gently against the side of Kamehameha I. Captain Blackwell came up the side onto the deck and Aloka saluted before he could stop himself. Captain Blackwell returned the salute and then turned with a conscious look to his coxswain Narhilla, following him up the side. Narhilla was bearing a set of iron manacles for wrists and ankles.

  “Your second in command?” Captain Blackwell asked.

  “Maaro.” Aloka motioned at a man standing behind him near the wheel.

  At a nod from Captain Blackwell, Narhilla delivered the set of irons from Albion to Kamehameha I’s lieutenant. Aloka moved to the gangway as the state canoe was seen to put off from shore, carrying the two regents and the prisoner.

  “Good luck, Master Al,” Narhilla whispered. He passed Aloka before going down the ship’s side into Albion’s boat. “God be with you.”

  Aloka felt that lump of emotion rise in his throat, the same he’d been fighting for days to keep down.

  The strong strokes of the paddlers, chanting as they came, brought the state canoe rapidly alongside the sloop. Ka‘ahumanu, Karaimoku and their suite came aboard, and then George was handed up the side. His hands were bound with sennit cord, so he was unable to climb the ship’s side unassisted. George jerked his arms loose of the seamen’s grasp once on deck. There was a haughty set to his face. He would not deign to look at any of them saving Aloka. George stared at him intently, with a look of cold hatred and contempt.

  “Take that man below and clap him in irons.”

  George was led away between two sturdy warriors at Aloka’s command. Maaro followed behind them with the irons. Aloka had rehearsed some of the proceedings of this day with his crew. He went to supervise the bringing aboard a worn native canoe, part of which might have been used as a float board but that it was to be George’s sepulcher: by ancient custom of the people.

  “In some lands they set the condemned man adrift in the canoe to starve to death,” Ka‘ahumanu said to Aloka. The canoe was on board, and he stood with the regents on the quarterdeck. “We are not so barbaric.”

  George would be put, manacled, into the canoe and sunk.

  “The ship is ready to get underway, with your leave.” Aloka bowed to the regents, received their nods, and walked forward and called out the orders to unmoor ship.

  The men chanted at the capstan, and Aloka looked apprehensively at his father. There was no singing and chanting on the deck of a Royal Navy ship.

  Captain Blackwell merely shook his head. “I do not like the look of it.”

  Aloka knew he spoke of the weather, the glass falling, the strengthening wind.

  “Karaimoku says these conditions only ever foretell heavy rains, but I shall not be unhappy for sea room.”

  From the activity on board the Blonde, as Kamehahameha I sailed past her, it seemed Captain Verson was in agreement. The frigate was unmooring. Aloka and Captain Blackwell lifted their hats to the quarterdeck of the man-of-war as they passed. Black Savages they must seem today to the English officers and seamen, who knew on what business they were about.

  Both Aloka and Captain Blackwell were aware it would not take long to sail to a point the regents would deem propitious for George’s end. They would not sink the land. It would take place in deep water, the realm of the sharks and whales and great tuna, but within sight of the land they were defending by George’s death. Aloka had an odd sensation as though time were running out for him too.

  “Tell me something of my mother and my grandfather, Ata Gege,” he said to Captain Blackwell. “Something good, if you please, that will not make me shudder to be a part of them. Of all this.”

  Captain Blackwell wore a serious considering expression. They each had a hand grasping a stanchion, the sloop was breasting high swells as she beat to windward. “Kalani gave you up to protect you from Kaumuarii. She was afraid he would murder you to assure his succession to Ata Gege’s place. She wanted me to make you a chief among the white men.”

  “She worried for me, and now look what I am come to. I do not even know if she lives, because I could not bear speaking to him. How is that as compensation for her sacrifice?”

  “Kalani did what most mothers would do. She must have seen what Kaumuarii was becoming, even then. Your grandfather Ata Gege was a violent man, but also a man of war and of honor.” They caught Ka‘ahumanu signaling to them, and exchanged a pained look. “He once told me, before a battle...be calm, be voiceless, be valiant, drink the bitter waters, my son, turn not back, onward unto death.”

  George was hoisted up the after hatchway companion ladder by Kamehahameha I’s lieutenant and bosun. They attended him, shackled hand and foot, as George shuffled across the deck. The rotten canoe was in the water, with lines fastening her head and stern to the sloop’s larboard main chains. The prisoner was turned to face the regents, who each made him a speech. Not as long a one as the elders otherwise might have done, because the wind had risen and the motion of the sloop, though lying to, was lively. A squall of rain hit them, as George was lowered into the already leaking canoe.

  George shook his head to clear his soaked hair from his face and lifted his manacled hands toward his shirt collar. Aloka stood in the chains, one arm wrapped around a shroud. He leaned down toward the canoe, an axe gripped in his hand.

  “You will do this then?” George shouted at him over the roar of the wind. “And be damned forever, you and the whelps you may have with your luscious wife!”

  Aloka glared at him, raising the axe, and suddenly the expression of George’s face changed. His look of hatred and malice melted into a wide eyed innocent and pleading stare.

  “Don’t do it, little brother, we were nourished at the same breast, our boyish sports were in common. Remember how we played and laughed?”

  Aloka held George’s gaze as he swung the axe, hacking a hole in the canoe’s bottom. George screamed and spat at him, the sea flooding into the little craft.

  “Let go the falls,” Aloka called.

  The seamen on deck cast off the lines holding the canoe alongside. A wave swamped the canoe and reached far up the sloop’s side, drenching Aloka as he clung to the shrouds outside the ship. He forced himself to look at George, who was cursing him in a language neither Hawaiian or English. A language that sent a chill to his heart. The awful and frightening rant was cut off as water closed over George’s head. Aloka leaned far out to watch as the pale face receded into the deep. George Kaumuarii’s long hair stretched upward as though reaching for the surface. Another great sea dashed against the ship’s side, nearly tearing Aloka from his perch.

  He felt strong arms grasping him, and his father and Maaro pulled him inboard. Aloka stood swaying before the regents and his crew, all eyes were turned expectantly on him. The tears on his face could not be distinguished in his sodden condition. Aloka wanted nothing so much as to retreat to his cabin, to hide, and give further vent to his misery.

  The words he’d thought of and almost spoken after another traitor’s death came to him. They seemed to desire a speech, so Aloka stepped forward and raised his voice.

  To Hawai‘i: and may he who wishes to defend her

  die an honorable death,

  And may he who is a traitor to her be dishonored

  to his last breath,

  May no cross mark his remains,

  May his burial ground remain unblessed,

  And may he lack a loyal son to close his eyes

  in peaceful rest.

  In response the men broke out in a favorite chant.

  A shark going inland i
s my chief,

  A very strong shark able to devour all on land,

  A shark of very red gills is the chief.

  Aloka felt a little sickened, both unworthy and unwilling to be compared to the great king Kamehameha. He was no conqueror, no great leader of men. All he’d done was murder his half-brother.

  “Take us back to Honolulu, Admiral!” Karaimoku thundered above the roar of the wind and driving rain.

  Aloka looked about him, he saw the grave concern in Captain Blackwell’s eyes, and forced himself to come alive to the world round him. The world of the living. He ordered his men to their stations in a strong voice, and then he took Ka‘ahumanu and Karaimoku to the break of the quarterdeck to shelter from the rain.

  “Sir, Ma’am, with respect,” Aloka said. “It would be a danger to the ship to return to Honolulu. We are much better where we are, I should even like to take her farther out to sea. The gail is blowing right on shore.”

  His father, who’d accompanied them for the conference, wore a look of relief and nodded his head.

  “It may be a danger to the ship,” Ka‘ahumanu said, “but it will be a greater one to the nation should we not return. The people will think that George Kaumuarii has won, and conjured this great storm to deprive the land of her regents and protectors.”

  Aloka stared at Kamehameha’s queen, and he could see by the gravity of Karaimoku’s face that he was in agreement with Ka‘ahumanu. He could not take council with his father, much as he would have liked to. There was only one captain—admiral, his guts twisted at the idea—in command of Kamehameha I and it was his decision alone. He had to weigh the beautiful sloop, the welfare of his men, against the stability of the nation he’d just killed for.