The Devil's Fire

by Matt Tomerlin

  The captain's bed on the far side of the room was extremely inviting. She found herself drifting toward it in a daze. I'll just have a closer look at it, she told herself. It's quite nice. Soft blankets. Maybe just a touch. Very soft indeed. Silk, in fact. And the pillows . . . so very soft. Mmm. I could die in them.

  She was plunging into the soft blankets and pillows before she knew what was happening. She stretched out gloriously in the warm sheets and rolled over. Her eyelids were too heavy to hold open any longer.

  As Katherine rapidly drifted out of consciousness, she dimly recollected that, for some reason or another, she had meant to steer clear of the bed. For the life of her she couldn't remember why she would wish to deny herself something so comfortable.

  GRIFFITH

  Griffith's excuses for avoiding his cabin were wearing as thin as the purple hue on the western horizon. He rarely ventured outdoors after dusk, especially on cold Atlantic nights, and this was a particularly frigid night. A canvas of bright stars speckled a black and cloudless sky. The crew had grown quiet, perhaps as a result of their captain's presence, and the ship glided through gently rippled waters. A light swishing, quiet yet constant, mingled with the soft creaking of wood and the intermittent sweeping of sails.

  Harbinger was slowly descending the East Coast of North America. She would hug the coast until she reached Florida, at which point she would break for the Bahamas.

  At midday Griffith calculated the latitude with a quadrant. Afterward he spent a fair portion of the day studying navigational charts that he had obtained from various merchant vessels over the years. The charts were elegant works of art to behold, but Griffith was too often frustrated by their geographical imprecision. More often than not the curves of the coast differed drastically from what the charts presented. He often became so discouraged that he would rip a chart to shreds and throw the pieces into the ocean. Due to this crude process of elimination, only the most accurate remained.

  After finishing with the charts, Griffith happened upon the ship's cooper. The man reiterated what Griffith already knew; the water supply was exhausted and food was dwindling. Over the past several months the barrels of provisions that had once filled much of the lower decks had gradually decreased, while booty had increased. All of the pigs and cows had been eaten and only one goat remained to provide milk. The majority of the chickens and geese had been stricken with a malady that swiftly claimed their lives. The cooper suspected that several ailing crewmen had been infected with this disease. Thus far, fourteen had taken ill. Griffith and Livingston convinced them to keep from their duties until they recovered. One man had died the day before Harbinger intercepted Lady Katherine.

  After speaking with the cooper, Griffith went below decks to check on the ailing men, only to find that their conditions had worsened. If the malady didn't kill them, the lack of water and food surely would.

  The problem, he grimly concluded, would work itself out naturally. He didn't like having to think this way, but years of seafaring had given him little choice. Losing crewmen to various illnesses was as natural to him as the boundless waves that the ship crested each day.

  Griffith ascended from the clammy depths of the lower decks and joined the healthier members of his crew above. They were presently living off of dried meat, hardtack, and eggs from the few hens that had maintained their health. He trusted that his crew would survive the journey to the West Indies. This wasn't the first time they had found themselves absent water, and it gave them a worthy excuse to glug spirits all the more recklessly.

  However, Griffith was growing weary of stale biscuits and tough jerky. He would have given anything for the tender meat of a Caribbean turtle or a stout mug of ale. He didn’t particularly care for the dryness of white meat, but even a hearty breast of chicken would suffice right about now.

  It was twilight by the time Griffith found Livingston fastening a cannon that had come loose on one end. It was not unlike the quartermaster to attend to lesser duties on his own, to make certain they were done proper. Griffith informed him of the ship's pressing need for provisions. Livingston indicated that he would pass the information to the crew on the morrow.

  Griffith took his leave and wondered what more he might find to do. It had been a productive day. The work had kept his mind off of Katherine Lindsay. She had tried to kill him, nearly succeeding where the most dangerous of men had failed. For the first time in his life, Griffith was afraid. Of all the dangers in the ocean, he was afraid of a girl.

  Before releasing her from the mainmast, he had removed all potential weapons from his cabin, leaving nothing for her to wield against him, though he seriously doubted she would have any strength left to try anything. And there was still a chance that she would die of her injuries.

  So why was he apprehensive?

  The silence of the crew, he realized. It was unnerving. Was his fear plain for all of them to see? How well did he conceal it? How long could he stay out here in the cold, with their eyes fixed on him? Perhaps Livingston was right. Perhaps he should have killed her. Perhaps he should have saved himself the trouble and just left her at the mainmast to die.

  The very thought twisted his stomach in knots. He would have left a man to such a fate without a moment’s hesitation or subsequent regret, and he had done so many times before, for lesser crimes than Katherine Lindsay’s attempt on his life. Why was this so difficult?

  He realized, suddenly, that he had never taken the life of a woman. This should have been obvious, but it was something he hadn’t been required to consider until now. Men went to sea knowing the dangers inherent, and left their women on land where they belonged, sparing them a plethora of dangers. If a man died at sea, Griffith saw no tragedy in it, for he knew the risks when he set out.

  A woman did not belong out here.

  It was Thomas Lindsay who brought her to sea, he reminded himself. The fool should never have taken his wife to sea in the first place. The blame is his, and it died with him. All that remains is the frightened, wounded creature in your cabin.

  He entered the cabin with a pewter plate of jerky and hardtack in one hand and a cutlass in the other. Neither was necessary.

  The girl was fast asleep, breathing heavily through a gaping mouth, her body twisted strangely with one arm behind her back, the other spread out across the bed, and a bent leg crossed over a straight leg. The dress she had worn since her capture was as ragged a mess as her hair. Her skin was an angry shade of red and her lips were blistered. The hollows around her eyes were black, reminding Griffith of the dying men he had visited earlier in the day. She was a faint shadow of the beauty he had first gazed on.

  He kneeled beside her and watched her stomach rise and fall. Her eyes vacillated beneath twitching lids. He set the plate on the bedside table and crossed the cabin to his desk, where he fell into the chair and leaned back. He put his heels on his desk, crossing one leg over the other, and stretched his arms, interlocking his fingers behind his head.

  He fell asleep before he could appreciate how exhausting the day had been. The day's exertions carried into his dreams. He dreamed that he was still toiling with the crew, studying charts, and discussing provisions.

  It seemed that he dreamt for several hours before he awoke to find the room filled with smoke. His eyes stung. He blinked until tears lined the lids. He felt a strong pressure in his lungs, as though someone was sitting on his chest. He sprang from the chair and searched frantically for the source of the smoke. He swept through the room, unable to see two feet beyond the swirling haze. He stumbled several feet and bumped into a wall before deciding it best to evacuate. He felt along the wall until his fingers brushed over the groove of the door.

  He hesitated. He was forgetting something.

  The girl!

  He shook his head, damning his stupidity, and thrust himself into the smoke. He pushed through for several paces, the room seeming larger than he remembered. The fumes burned at his eyes, forcing the lids to squeeze shut
involuntarily. When he opened them again, he saw that the bed was on fire.

  He made the mistake of gasping. The sudden inhalation sucked ash into his lungs and he crumpled to his knees in a fit of coughs. The air was cleaner below, giving him a chance to recover his breath. He spared a second glance at the bed and saw that the fire that consumed it was now spreading toward him along the planks of the floor.

  He glanced around, reacquainting himself with the cabin. Once he was sure of the direction he had come, he scampered for the exit on all fours. He continued until his head slammed into a slender pair of legs. They were hard and resolute, like steel poles firmly rooted in the floor. He peered upward, scaling the legs as they curved into a pair of slender hips, glistening with sweat. He continued upward, past a naked waist, past small but firm breasts, past a slim, elegant neck, past a sharp jaw and unsmiling lips. . . until finally he met the eyes of Katherine Lindsay.

  She was taller and sleeker than he remembered. Her hair was on fire and each truss writhed like a serpent. Her skin was as white as ivory. Her eyes were obsidian. A terrible grin suddenly split her face, revealing a set of razor-sharp teeth.

  She must have thought him pathetic on all fours, because she started to laugh. Her chest heaved with every giggle and her hair billowed until the flames touched the roof. The ceiling was set alight by an outward spreading blaze that rolled over the rafters like water over stones in a brook. Wooden planks cracked and popped as the flames chewed away at them.

  She extended a hand, fingernails stretching into long and shiny black claws. Her awful giggles transcended her, echoing throughout the room and mingling with the roar of fire until it seemed that the flames themselves were laughing at him in a collective hellish chorus.

  He beheld a tiny man entrapped within in her black eyes. Imprinted on the man's face was an expression of stark terror. Griffith was overcome with pity for the sniveling little man, and in turn saw his pity reflected in that man's face. As the fire encircled the doomed man from behind, he felt the flames lapping at his own back with claws as sharp as those that were closing over his head.

  He screamed.

  He woke with a start that nearly toppled him from his chair. He righted himself by dropping his feet from the desk to the floor. His boots pounded the planks too loudly, and he checked to see if he had woken the girl.

  She was still asleep on the opposite side of the cabin. The bed was not on fire. The room was not filled with smoke. Thin trails of soft morning light spilled in through the foggy windows to highlight particles of dust.

  The room ensnared a morning chill that was a welcome contrast to the burning fury of his nightmare. Griffith allowed himself a small chuckle at the vividness of his imagination. He had suffered hideously creative nightmares as long as he could remember, often waking in a cold sweat. Before she died when he was only six years old, he remembered his mother racing in and sitting at his bedside to calm him. She always lit a single candle before leaving, but the flickering light only made matters worse, scattering dancing shadows along the walls, forging a diversity of frightening beasts and demons.

  Griffith shook his head. He gave superstition no quarter. Sleep played cruel tricks on the mind, and none had ever been realized upon waking. His crew, however, were notorious for indulging irrational fears, from multi-tentacled sea serpents to homicidal mermaids that spirited a man to the bottom of the sea and feasted on him whole, starting with his cock.

  The familiar sound of feet pummeling the main deck seeped into the room through slits in the walls. It was a soothing sound that told him everything was all right. The world had not ended while he slept. His ship had not been claimed by a fiery demon.

  He stood from his chair and stretched with a great yawn. He didn't feel as rested as usual and his back ached from the uncomfortable angle at which he had settled into the chair. He rubbed his eyes for a good long while until he was certain the lids would remain parted.

  He shuffled toward the bed. The plate of food on the bedside table remained untouched. The girl hadn't shifted an inch since the previous night. He checked to make sure her stomach was still moving. It was.

  He went to his wardrobe and changed into a fresh pair of clothes. He had a difficult time removing his shirt, for it clung to his skin. When he turned the garment over he discovered that the entire backside was soaked with sweat.

  For a larger man, the windingly narrow pathways between barrels and crates would have been impossible to navigate. The hold was the most expansive space below decks, but the cramped cargo made the room seem claustrophobic.

  It was an ugly place. A square beam of the sun's morning light seeped in via the open hatch; an impenetrable white glare untainted by the surrounding gloom of the shadowy wooden interior. The air was a putrid mélange of rotting wood, tarred hemp, gunpowder, spirits, and animals both living and dead. For Griffith, the smell signified achievement. He thought not of the hold's stench, but of the luscious aroma of vegetables on his future plantation; a future purchased with the treasures and goods he stacked here.

  He continued along the slim path until he came to a brown chest that had been plundered from Lady Katherine. The chest was the length of a human body, resembling a coffin, and was carved with an intricate floral pattern. He hefted the lid. It arched with a creak that echoed throughout the hold. Several neatly folded London dresses were stacked within. He plucked the topmost dress and spread it out before him. The satin was colored a bright cherry pink that he imagined would extravagantly match Katherine Lindsay's hair. He refolded the garb, though not as neatly as it had been folded when he had discovered it. He unfolded it and tried again, with less success. He sighed and gave it one last try, and was marginally satisfied with the results. He decided that would have to do and tucked the dress under his arm. He gathered a few more dresses from the stack, careful to keep them folded, and closed the chest's lid.

  On his way out he came across a sack filled with kitchenware. He emptied the bag of its contents and stuffed the dresses inside, not wanting the crew to spy him bearing such potentially controversial items.

  Griffith hurried back to his cabin. He knew little of feminine ways, but had frequently heard that material possessions, such as expensive dresses, were chief among their priorities. The girl would delight in discovering that she had not been parted from her wardrobe.

  It was commonly known to any pirate worth his salt that a woman married not for love of the man, but for love of his riches. Griffith was certain that Thomas Lindsay had made a respectable fortune from his business as a merchant shipper, but he doubted that Lindsay would have seen in a lifetime what Harbinger acquired from a month's plunder.

  In the girl's mind, her husband's untimely death was undoubtedly a tragedy. She had probably developed a natural affection for the man out of sheer familiarity. This accounted for her irrational assault on Griffith. He was willing to forgive her for that; clearly she had been out of her mind at the time. Her five-day spell at the mainmast would cause her to think twice before she made any further attempts on his life.

  It would take time to liberate the ties to her husband, but Griffith was confident that he was up to the task. Harbinger would do half of the job for him. It was a new environment and a new life. Thomas Lindsay was not a part of it. She would either concede to that fact or perish in her defiance. Griffith hoped for the former, but he would be forced to grant the latter if given no other option.

  The choice was Katherine Lindsay's.

  She was still sleeping like a baby when he arrived with the dresses. He was starting to wonder if she would ever rouse. Perhaps the cutlass's damage had run deeper than her thick skull. Griffith recalled an unfortunate accident involving one of his crewmen. The man had survived a harrowing plummet from a mast, suffering what appeared to be nothing more than a minor head injury, only to fall asleep that night and never open his eyes again. Yet still he breathed, forever lost in slumber. It was a month before the crew unanimously decided to put him out of hi
s misery and give him to the sea.

  Griffith turned the sack on its end and shook it, depositing the dresses onto the end of the bed by Katherine's feet. He spared her a final glance and hurried out of the cabin.

  He found Thatcher curled over the gunwale, retching. The surgeon's massive round belly contracted, and the pale contents of his stomach burst from his mouth. Griffith plugged his nose. The stench of Thatcher's vomit was infamously nauseating. The crew often jested that one whiff could kill a man faster than any poison. "You'll foul the ocean with all that sick," Griffith said.

  "I can't help it," Thatcher said, wiping his mouth and catching his breath. "It keeps happening."

  "You're the doctor. Surprised you haven't figured it on your own."

  "I have figured it out," Thatcher declared. "I'm not meant to be on this ship!"

  Griffith chuckled with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Belay that noise, Thatcher. If men were meant to be here, we wouldn’t need to build ships."

  "An astonishing observation," Thatcher exclaimed sarcastically. "I feel better already."

  "It's not my concern what you feel, save you're well enough to carry on with your duties. I've come to ask you to look on the girl. Is that something you can fit betwixt your daily purging?"

  Thatcher embellished a sigh. "What's ails her now?"

  "A bout of sleep that's persisted since before noon yesterday, far as my knowledge."

  The surgeon looked at him like he was crazy. "That's all?"

  "That's not a long time?"

  "All things considered? No."

  Griffith brought his face close to Thatcher's, which he instantly regretted when he glimpsed slimy chunks of half-digested meat stuck to those bulbous chins. He managed not to flinch. "You speak the truth, Thatcher?"

  The surgeon diverted his eyes, blinking copiously. "Why would I lie?"

  "It escapes me," Griffith admitted. "But that doesn't mean you wouldn't. Sometimes men do things I don't understand. My lack of comprehension doesn't prevent these things from happening."