Salamander

by Thomas Wharton

  – Are we ready to cast off, then?

  – Yes, Pica said, looking back once more at the river.

  She ducked into the great cabin. Flood was stretched out on the banquette, his shirt open to the waist. Darka sat beside him, holding his wrist. Turini and the twins stood nearby, watching.

  Darka looked up at her husband and drew a hand across her forehead. He mouthed words to her and she nodded.

  – She says he has a fever, the carpenter said. It is not bad, but we must watch him.

  Pica crossed to the banquette and knelt beside her father. Darka rose from Flood’s side and was stepping noiselessly across the room when suddenly she halted, staring at the doorway. Pica turned, and at first she thought one of Snow’s shipmates had come to speak with them. Then the cloaked woman in the doorway pulled back her hood and stepped into the candlelight.

  – I followed you, the woman said, holding up the quoin key on its ribbon. There’s something I would like to give you. Again.

  Pica climbed to her feet and stood beside the banquette. She saw that Turini and his family had shrunk into a corner of the room. Darka’s hand was over her mouth. The woman from the Cabinet of Wonders stepped closer and set the quoin key on the chart table. She spoke Pica’s name softly, like a question. Pica stood without moving, unable to look at the woman’s eyes, but she saw the pallor of her slender neck, the fragile shadow of the pulse beating there. Then she crossed the space between them, stepped forward into the damp rainy scent of the woman’s cloak, into her arms. She felt the woman’s uncertain embrace grow stronger as she surrendered to it, felt a trembling hand stroke her hair. Near her heart another heart beating.

  The night Flood was caught leaping into her bed, she was already gone from the castle. Taken by her father’s men across the river and up into the mountains to his hunting salash, where she was watched day and night. The Count came to see her only once. She asked about Flood and was told he had fled the castle the night she was taken away. That was the last time she saw her father.

  When spring came his men took her down the Danube on a barge, brought her at last to the ship, where she was locked in a cabin without windows.

  All that she could glimpse of the world beyond the walls of the cabin was through a crack along the seam between two timbers: a thin sliver of sea and cloud. The voyage was stormy and rough. She understood, overhearing the curses and complaints of the sailors, that they were making little headway. Days went by during which her only sight of others was the hand that slid her meals through a narrow slot in the bottom of the door. For the life growing within her she ate everything, though she was often sick afterward and threw it all back up.

  It was when she first tried to escape that she discovered the Abbé was her jailer. Late one night she found and pried loose a panel in her cabin that opened into a narrow tunnel. After crawling through a cramped, lightless space alive with rats, she came up through the floor of the great cabin and found the Abbé sitting calmly at the captain’s table as if waiting for her.

  Your father planned to have you shut up in a convent, he said. I persuaded him otherwise. Rest assured that you and your child will be well cared for.

  Although he tried to conceal it with his words, she saw that he was agitated, at war with himself, and she had a sudden hope that he might be persuaded to let her go. But when she pleaded for her liberty she saw his eyes grow cold with satisfaction.

  The Count had given him the ship’s plans, he told her. He knew its secrets better than anyone. For the first time since she had been taken from the castle she gave in to despair and wept.

  Quebec, he said as he escorted her back to her cabin, may remind you of your father’s island, a fortress perched on a rock. But in my home you shall find all the comforts you lack here.

  She did not see him again for what seemed like weeks, and when he finally came to visit her, she understood that he had stayed away deliberately, had left her to the rough care of the sailors so that he would appear as her only benefactor. He expected humility, gratitude, and she gave him cold silence. She also noticed the dark crescents under his eyes, how much paler he was than usual. The voyage was not going well for him either.

  He asked her how things were with her burden.

  The time is drawing close, he said when she had given him no answer. You will see me again.

  One morning she woke to the cry of gulls. From the steadiness of the deck beneath her she knew that they had anchored somewhere, but all that her secret window showed her was its usual vista: grey sky and dark waves. That night her water broke and she screamed for someone to help her. After that she was seized and cast away by waves of pain and came back to find faces over her, hands on her body. The frightened old woman who assisted at the birth would not speak, even when Irena pleaded with her eyes for any word at all to bring her some comfort.

  Then the agony was gone, vanished as if it had never been, and she saw through tears a blood-streaked little body squirming in the midwife’s arms. A girl. At the first tiny cry she struggled out of her delirium, knowing she would be given only a moment. She reached for the quoin key she kept on a chain around her neck.

  And a name. Small Pica, or philosophy. A good name for the heroine of a novel. She did not guess that in the place her newborn child would live, the word already named something.

  – At the Ospedale, Pica said, I collected things that had stories. I thought everything had a story, except me.

  The hush of night had fallen on the river. Irena and Pica sat together in the great cabin, watching over Flood as he wrestled with the angel of fever. Darka had brought more candles as the evening waned and the cabin darkened around them. Snow and her crew were readying the ship for departure, and from all parts of the ship came the sliding of chains and the flap and rustle of unfolding sailcloth. The scent of the smoke from London’s many fires grew sharper in the cooling air.

  Irena told her story in a whisper and Pica listened, spellbound. Once Flood surprised them by speaking.

  – You’ll go with me then.

  He was looking at Irena.

  – Nicholas …

  – We’ll go to London, he said. Your father won’t find us there.

  She bathed his forehead with a wet cloth and he closed his eyes again and slept.

  Please understand, the Abbé said when he took the baby, this is no more to my liking than to yours. But for now, it must be.

  For a long time afterward she wished only for death. Then in the distant call of a seabird, shrill and wavering but strong, she heard that tiny cry again, and she knew that she had to live.

  One night there came a terrifying storm that seemed to hurtle the ship into another world. She heard the splintering of wood and a shudder throughout the ship, the hoarse shouts of the sailors, the Abbé’s among them, shrill with desperation.

  In the calm that came with morning, the ship limped into a port where the only sound was that of a church bell. As the ship yawed on its anchor chains she was able to piece together, through her sliver of a window, a picture of a quiet, tidy, red-brick town that she found out much later was New York. At the sight of a child playing with a dog she knew that this was not where the Abbé had intended to bring her.

  He was not there when they bound her and led her under cover of night into a black mail coach. She wondered if the journey had killed him, and the thought left her only with even less hope. She was transported miles over terrible roads, until at dawn the mail coach pulled up by the mossy ruin of a watermill. She was allowed to drink from the stream, and then her hands were bound and she was placed in a canoe and for days travelled upriver with three silent, leather-faced woodsmen who brought her at last to a colony of religious dissenters in the forest. She was lifted from the canoe, her legs cramped and useless after the long ride. The people would not speak to her. They asked no questions of the men in the canoe, and as soon as she could walk again they put her to work in the fields.

  For a long time she scarcely ga
ve a thought to running away. Where would she run to? And worse, she began to believe the things she was told again and again, night and day, about why she was there. How she had to pay for her sins. And so, though they soon relaxed their watchfulness over her, a year passed before the day she made her escape. The thought came to her suddenly, while working in the tomato patch. She simply set her hoe down on a furrow and walked into the forest.

  She walked on and on, running now and then at the thought of the colony’s vicious watchdogs, the iron bodice she still wore cutting into her flesh. That evening she waded across a stream and almost froze to death during the night in her drenched clothes. She wandered for another day and night in the woods, starving and feverish.

  They came out of the forest silently, like people in a dream. A woman and a child, dressed in deerskins. The woman had a knife. She spoke to Irena in their language and a word of her father’s came back to her: savages. There was nothing left in her to scream. She stumbled backwards and fell, crashing through dead leaves, into the dark. They bundled her in blankets beside a fire. They fed her thin strips of meat, a kind of porridge made of corn. When she was able to walk, they brought her from their camp in the forest to a Dutch settlement.

  Irena ceased speaking and gazed into the distance.

  – I was with them for days, she finally said, but I never found out their names.

  The candle flames fluttered and black shadows lapped at the corners of the cabin. To Pica, Irena seemed the still centre of a dancing web of light.

  – I made my way to New York, she went on, and found work as a seamstress. When I had saved enough to buy materials, I began to make clockwork toys and curiosities. The colonists loved them. Such things are scarce in that part of the world.

  – Then you came to London, said Pica.

  – Yes. I thought about a book your father showed me once. I decided to return to the beginning of a story, his story, and wait there.

  The candle near him shed a yellow parchment light. He gazed at the flame, bending and folding in the night air.

  – Irena.

  – I’m here, Nicholas.

  – I don’t hear the clock.

  Something else he had to tell her. He could not remember. So much had vanished, the world rolled up like the two ends of a yellowed scroll, so that there was only the gently rocking bed making its nocturnal rounds through the castle, the dim wavering half-light, Irena’s hand on his. There had only ever been this. Only ever would be.

  She spoke again and he struggled to hold on to the words. His body felt weightless, as though it had burned to ash and left only a lingering shape of smoke.

  – We’re on the ship, she said. Do you remember?

  – I’ve finished the book, he said. But I don’t know if the Count will be pleased.

  – My father is dead, Nicholas.

  For a moment he was lost and then everything returned, clear and sharp. The castle’s walls and floors fell away from him, scattering like a house of cards.

  – Your father, he said, thought he wanted a mirror of the world, of everything. But he really wanted the world to mirror him.

  – He wished to own books, Irena said. Not read them.

  All that had happened since rushed like a wave into his thoughts. Pica …

  – I must go, Nicholas, Irena said. It is late. Rest now, and we will talk again soon.

  – The girl, he said. I tried to teach her the craft. I thought she needed something. For when I was gone.

  – She told me about your lessons, Irena said. She says you’re a good teacher.

  He closed his eyes. Her voice was already small and far away, receding with the rest of the world. Everything a father does, he thought, becomes a lesson. Even this.

  The night wind had swept the smoke away, and in the cold moonlight the river lay outstretched like a pallid arm. The mortal stillness of the air told Pica that dawn was not far off. The world itself seemed to be brooding on her mother’s story. She glanced up into the mainmast rigging, where Snow’s crew was already perched, setting new ropes and tackle. The tide would be nearing the ebb now. She shivered and pulled her cloak about her shoulders. Soon they would be casting off, and she would meet the Abbé again. After all he had taken from them already, he would have her father’s work, too.

  She heard a sound behind her and turned to see her mother stepping out onto the deck, her face pale with exhaustion.

  – How is he? Pica asked.

  – He’s sleeping quietly now. He spoke about you.

  Snow joined them at the top of the gangplank, carrying one of the lanterns they had brought from Canton. Irena stood looking out at the black wall of the city, and then turned to Pica.

  – The Abbé can’t be trusted, she said. Remember that.

  Snow lit the lantern and handed it to Irena, who took it with a nod.

  – You have a place here, Irena said, touching Pica’s hand. Take care.

  She turned and descended the gangplank. Pica watched her hurry along the deserted quay until her cloak was swallowed up in shadows and only the light of the Chinese lantern could be seen, swaying and bobbing in the dark. Finally, when she must have rounded the corner of a lane Pica could not see in the blackness, the light winked out.

  – I didn’t tell her about the Acheron, Pica said to Snow, who was peering upward to survey the progress of the refitting.

  – Good, Snow said. Leave that worry to me.

  Pica returned to the great cabin to sit with her father while he slept. She took the book from her pocket and held it in her hands, weariness tugging at her like an undertow.

  She sat up suddenly. The book lay unopened in her lap. She felt she had only slept a moment, but the candles were out, and pale, cold dawn-light illuminated the cabin.

  Her father was not on the banquette. His blanket had been placed over her shoulders.

  She descended to the press room and, as she had expected, she found him there, slumped at the work table with his journal open before him. While she had slept he had put away his binding tools, tidied up the clutter on the work table, and then sat down to make an entry in his journal. The paper was untouched, but the quill was in his hand, the ink on its tip gone dry.

  She set the book on the table and knelt beside him, saw that his eyes were open, unseeing. She placed a hand on his arm.

  – Father …

  After a while she stood and looked around the silent cabin. The chase of gooseflesh type still sat on the carriage of the press, and a sheet of fresh paper had been fixed to the tympan.

  Hearing sounds above her, she stirred at last and climbed back up on deck. The Turinis stood together near the gangplank, donning their hats and cloaks for the journey to Covent Garden. The children, still yawning and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, noticed her first and called her name. Numbly she joined the family at the gangplank, and told them that her father was dead.

  They followed her back to the press room, and Snow joined them. Pica stood by while Turini picked her father up in his arms and laid him out on the cot he had so often collapsed onto after a long night’s work. Then the carpenter went up on deck, and after a while they heard the sound of his hammer. Darka and the children bowed their heads, Miza glancing up timidly as if waiting for her to join them. Then she understood. It was for her to say what would happen now. Instead she turned to Amphitrite Snow.

  – We can take him with us, Snow said. If you wish.

  – No, Pica said with sudden certainty. London is where he wanted to be.

  Snow’s crew came down soon after, and carried the body up on deck, placing it in the rough casket Turini had hastily nailed together out of his scaffold. When the carpenter had nailed shut the lid, the women lifted the casket and carried it down the gangplank. They set their burden on the wet stones of the quay, where Pica stood with the Turinis, then hurried back up the gangplank to their posts on deck. Vaguely it came to her that they were eager to be off. There was no time for mourning in their world. The Ache
ron remained to be dealt with. And the Abbé.

  She said farewell to the Turinis and followed the women up the gangplank. Snow looked up from the helm and frowned at her.

  – I thought you would be staying behind too.

  Pica shook her head. Everything that had belonged to her father was on this ship. She had to be the one to give it away.

  As Turini was starting off in search of a cart, Pica had a sudden thought and called to him from the rail.

  – There’s a man in Covent Garden, she said. Monsieur Martin, the playing-card maker. He knew my father. He will help you. Then find my mother, please, and tell her.

  As the sun rose, the Bee sailed downriver with the tide, past the low meadows where cattle grazed, the salt marshes loud with hosts of raucous gulls. In the estuary a sheet of wet morning fog swept in off the grey sand flats.

  The crew had left Pica to herself in the press room. She sat for a long time at the work table, her hand on her father’s book. When she became aware of the crying of the gulls she rose at last, to finish setting things in order. She polished Ludwig, hung him back on his hook, and then turned to the press. The surface of the gooseflesh type was blank, still, but when she touched a fingertip to it a dull wave radiated outward. If the type would not solidify, she would have to give the chase to the Abbé as it was. She unclipped the paper from the tympan and hung it on the drying wire. Unlocking the chase, she lifted it carefully and set it down carefully on the work table, under the light from the hatch.

  She stood looking at the press for a while, empty now of type and paper, silent. It would have to be taken apart, she realized, in order to be brought out on deck. The Abbé and the Commander’s men would crowd in here with hammers and wrenches, and she would have to stand there, and let them take everything.

  Everything but the book. She would not let them have that.

  As she was polishing the ancient timbers, the scarred woman, Lucy Teach, appeared in the press room.