Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

by Kage Baker

  They stood there looking at him a while. John didn’t know what he was supposed to feel. Satisfaction, maybe, that the man was dead; but then again he’d no claim himself to Mrs. Waverly’s affections, had he? Besides, Captain Reynald had been good at his chosen trade. You have to honor a man for that, thought John.

  They pulled the body a bit farther up from the tide, and covered its face, before they walked on. Where shelving rocks ran out into the water, all grown over in sea anemones and mussels, they saw that there was indeed a splintered mast tilting up. There was most of a ship there, all broken to pieces, the Dutchman by the look of her. Kegs and crates floated in the tidepools, bobbing in the surge. Mr. Tudeley found a man’s shirt floating in a pool, and wrung it out and tried it on; it fit him, so he wore it. Sejanus found a length of calico in a tangle of weed, and so they tore it between them and made kerchiefs to tie on their heads against the sun. A little farther on there was another oar, which John picked up.

  They spent a while wading back and forth, salvaging. There were more bodies caught in the kelp there, smashed up pretty badly. Where a moat of clear water floated around a standing rock they found a black man dead, looking up from the bottom as from a bath.

  “That’s not him, though,” said John, half to himself.

  “Who?” said Sejanus.

  “The mulatto that was helping you loose the boat.”

  “Nobody helped me get the boat,” said Sejanus sharply. “There weren’t any mulattos on board.”

  “But I saw him, too,” said Mr. Tudeley. “I tell you he was there, sir.”

  “You didn’t see anyone,” said Sejanus. “There was no one there to see.”

  “Now, don’t you make game with us, mate,” said John. “There was that big one with the sword, when we took the Santa Ysabel. There was a black girl at Tortuga, which I didn’t see, but poor Anslow that’s dead saw her plain. And then we saw the mulatto helping you with the boat. So don’t you tell me they weren’t there!”

  Sejanus glared at them. “Chah! Where’d they go, then?” he said. “Where’d they disappear to, if they were real? You tell me that.”

  And any other man might have struggled to come up with an answer that made sense, and failed, and looked away sheepishly. But John had once seen a pretty girl turn into a ravening spirit of war, right before his eyes in broad daylight, and he knew there were answers that made no kind of sense to a reasoning man.

  “I’ll tell you what it is,” he said. “This is some of your heathen gods, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t have any gods,” said Sejanus. “Didn’t I tell you I was an atheist? And they aren’t gods, anyway.”

  “What d’you call them, then?” said John, in triumph. “You did see them, and you’re a liar if you say you didn’t.”

  Sejanus looked away and made a sour face. “They’re called loas. My mama called them orishas. Just spirits, not gods. Spirits of places; spirits of things. We left them behind in Africa. The obeah-people bargained with them like pedlars, trading them food and drink and I don’t know what, in return for favors.

  “My old father was an obeah man. But when the big ship took him away from Africa, the loas couldn’t even cross the water with him. Couldn’t make his chains drop off, either. Not much use, eh?”

  “But they must have made it across,” said John, “Or they wouldn’t be haunting you now.”

  “There are no loas here,” Sejanus insisted.

  “But we saw them,” said Mr. Tudeley, who was only just managing to follow the conversation. “Are they devils?”

  “No! They’re only imaginary. I imagined them.”

  “But we saw them too,” said John.

  “That’s only because I imagine better than white folks can,” said Sejanus sullenly. He stuck the end of his oar into the sand. “These will do for shovels. Let’s start burying all these bodies, before they can stink up the place.”

  * * *

  They buried as many as they had strength for then, and hauled the others above the waterline to bury later. John dug deeper for Anslow than for the others, because he’d known him longer. Anslow was rolled into his grave and John stood there a moment, trying to recall a prayer to say. All he could think of was that he always seemed to draw burial detail. On consideration, he decided he’d rather be the one doing the shoveling than the poor bastard being shoveled under, like Anslow.

  * * *

  When they came back to the grove at last, they found that Mrs. Waverly had indeed gathered coconuts for them, and moreover waded out into the rock pools and gathered whelks, using a knife she had apparently found on one of the bodies.

  “Did you salvage much of the wreck?” she inquired coolly, gouging a whelk from its shell.

  “Some,” said John, picking up a coconut and wishing he’d thought to take Anslow’s knife before he’d buried him.

  “I noticed a great deal of wood. We ought to be able to fashion new oars for the boat, and escape,” she said.

  “We’ll need to do better than that,” said John. “I been adrift in an open boat. No shelter, no safe place to keep victuals. We want something bigger. I was thinking we could build something from the wreckage. A pinnace, maybe. We could rig it with a sail. Lots of sailcloth washing about.”

  “Better still.” She smiled at him, for the first time in days. She glanced over at Mr. Tudeley and Sejanus, who were attempting to open a coconut, and spoke in a lower voice: “It may be that we shall resume our journey to Leauchaud after all. Only think of that!”

  John thought of it, and weighed up matters in his head. Much as he’d enjoyed being back on the account again, there was no denying he was once more penniless and at loose ends, and after nearly drowning at that. He saw in his mind a shopfront with his name above the door, and a yard full of good red brick, and all those folk needing new premises built in Port Royal. It put him in a generous mood.

  “I’m sorry about Reynald,” he said. “I know you liked him.”

  She shrugged, but did not look away from slicing up the whelk. “He seemed a decent man. A pity he drowned; but such was the risk of his profession, was it not? Nor will all the tears in the world bring him back. Let us go on and live.” She lifted the raw whelk and bit into it with her white teeth, and chewed.

  “I think you’re hitting it on the wrong end,” Sejanus advised Mr. Tudeley. “There’s supposed to be three little eyes, somewhere.”

  “I don’t see any,” said Mr. Tudeley. He raised a stone and brought it down on the coconut like a hammer, only to hit his thumb.

  “I reckon you’ve lost Tom’s letter now,” said John to Mrs. Waverly. “I hope you recollect what was in it, about where the money was hid?”

  She looked pained. “My dear Mr. James, every word of that letter is written on my heart. Pray, have no concern on that account.”

  “Yeeeeeaaaaarrrgh!” Mr. Tudeley, losing patience, flung the coconut as hard as he could against a rock. It struck with the sound of a cutlass cleaving a skull. He snatched it up and pressed his lips to the cracked shell, sucking avidly at the milk.

  TWELVE:

  Wrecks

  THERE WAS AN OPEN meadow on the slope above the spring, and there they made a camp, so as to be close to the water. John tramped up to the ridge behind the meadow, seeing there what Mrs. Waverly had discovered: that they were indeed on an island, perhaps ten miles long and five or six across at its widest point, nowhere of very great elevation.

  From even the modest height of the ridge, however, it was possible to spot the rock that had slain the Harmony, offshore on the island’s windward side. John could make out what he thought might be wreckage and bodies, littering the beach there.

  “More dead men,” said Sejanus, who had walked up after him. “Wish they’d just gone down to the bottom and stayed there.”

  “Aye,” said John. “There was a lot of provisions on board, though. Wonder if they’ve floated up?”

  “The flour and salt beef and all?” Sejanus rubbed his c
hin. “Would you want to eat them, after they’d been in the sea?”

  “We don’t know how long we’ll be here,” said John. “You go two weeks without eating, and just see how particular you are about a little spoilt food.”

  Sejanus sighed. “True enough,” he said.

  They found a trail down to the other side of the island, and on the way spotted what had made it; for a she-goat and a pair of kids ran bleating from them. They heard answering cries from off in the brush. “Stroke of luck!” said John. “Fresh meat.”

  “If we can catch them,” said Sejanus.

  They got to the other shore and there the dead were all men they knew, including some who had been on the Fraternity; so they knew she must have gone down as well, but there was no sign of her. The wreck of the Harmony; though, was clear to see, especially once they waded out across the rock pools and looked down through the clear water and waving weed. She had broken her keel and her whole stern lay, almost intact, just offshore; her bow lay a little further beyond.

  “Tide’s in,” said John, studying the wreck. “We can maybe dive on her, once it goes out.”

  They went back up to the camp in good spirits, to find that Mrs. Waverly had built a fire, and that Mr. Tudeley had opened one of the kegs that had floated ashore and found it full of rum. So you can well imagine their spirits rose higher then; and after a dinner of whelks cooked in coconut-meat, they rigged a couple of tents of sailcloth, and sat around the fire feeling pleased with themselves.

  “I must say,” said Mr. Tudeley, a little thickly (for he had been helping himself to the rum with a liberal hand), “regrettable as all the death is, I rather enjoy this state of nature.”

  “How do you mean?” Sejanus asked him. Mr. Tudeley waved his hand at their surroundings.

  “The bounty of Providence here for the taking. Food and drink, with no trouble about money or shops. No concern for one’s appearance. No employers or patrons with which to be troubled.”

  “It must seem rather an Eden,” said Mrs. Waverly.

  “Oh, by no means,” said Mr. Tudeley, and dipped his coconut-shell in the rum once more. “Rather more Cyclopean, you know. The law is what we please, here. Were some bully from that Dutchman to have survived, and was he to come up here and demand our rum or our goods—why, we might shoot him dead, with no constable to lay hands on us, nor any magistrate to hang us for it.”

  “We’d need a pistol,” said John.

  “Well, of course we’d need a pistol, but that’s not the point, is it?” said Mr. Tudeley. “What the point is, is that here we are free to look after our own interests. And after a lifetime of looking after the interests of others, I find it refreshing, upon my soul I do. Society places so many constraints upon one.”

  “You like it with the shackles off, do you?” said Sejanus, amused.

  “Shackles! The very word, sir, yes, the very word! Do you know, sir, I had occasion to reflect upon my whole life whilst I hung there from that hideous platform, awaiting death.”

  “You been doing that anyway, lately,” said John.

  “Yes. Well. In the storm it all resolved for me, in a moment of dreadful clarity. What had my life been but one long round of timid, smiling, obsequious servitude?” Mr. Tudeley belched. “A worm, sir, no more but a worm. A slave, no less than you were.” He raised his cup in a salute to Sejanus, who did not smile.

  “You don’t know anything about slavery,” he said.

  “I know that it is not to be endured,” said Mr. Tudeley.

  * * *

  Next day they repaired the one broken oar they’d found, and taking it and the other John rowed the boat round to the windward side of the island. In Port Royal there had been an old wreck sunk outside the harbor, from Spanish days, and penniless fellows on the beach used to go try their luck diving on her to see what they might find. John himself had tried it, for he was a strong swimmer with a big chest; so he was elected as their diver now.

  Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley sat in the boat and lowered a makeshift anchor. John, stripped down to a breech-clout tied on with rope, took up one of the rocks they’d brought out with them, and jumped over the side with it.

  Almost at once he found himself standing on the aft deck of the Harmony; blinking around in the clear water. The strong light of the sun came amber through the swaying weeds, softened to a sort of cathedral twilight. John lugged the stone to the companionway, remembering how he’d clung there in the last few moments before going overboard.

  He jumped down through it now. There before him was the narrow little passage to the cabins. Most of the cargo deck, what was left of it, was empty; but he saw a few barrels floating up against the underside of the deck, trapped there by their buoyancy. He let go the rock and pushed them, one by one, to the companionway, so they were free to bob to the surface, and followed them up.

  “How fare you, sir?” called Mr. Tudeley.

  “Well enough,” said John, when he had gulped in some air. “Nothing much but barrels down there. Might be more over t’the other half.”

  “I wonder, sir, whether you might fetch up my trunk?”

  “What?”

  “I had a change of clothes in it, you see, and some small necessary things I wished to keep.”

  Muttering to himself, John swam to the boat to fetch another rock; but it occurred to him that Mrs. Waverly’s trunk was down there as well, to say nothing of his own. He took another deep breath and dove again, letting the rock sink him down the companionway. There he released it and pulled himself along the passage to the cabins. And there he almost yelled aloud; for he looked up into the white face of the French sharpshooter who’d helped him fire the swivel gun. The man floated face down, trapped against the underside of the aft deck. His last breath was a silver bubble in his open mouth.

  Grimacing, John grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirt and pulled him down, backing away with him and letting him go at the companionway. The dead man drifted through, turning slowly as he went. The bubble escaped from his mouth and fled upward like a fish. John followed, looking around on the deck to see what else he might grab on this trip, and spotted the swivel gun on the broken rail. He swam over and wrenched at it until it came loose, rail and all. Cradling it in his arms, he pushed off against the deck and broke the surface.

  “Got this,” he gasped, manhandling it over the side into the boat.

  “What use is that, may I ask?” said Mr. Tudeley, scowling at it through sweat-fogged spectacles.

  “You never know. She’s a sweet little gun, and company may come to call,” said John, wiping his face with one hand.

  He dove four more times before he had to stop; it took a dive each to fetch up their trunks, and on the last he spotted two cutlasses and a pistol lying up against the bulkhead. Too weary to climb into the boat (which was now full of salvage in any case) John simply clung to the stern and rode it back as Sejanus rowed them ashore.

  The first thing he did, after he staggered dripping ashore, was haul out Mrs. Waverly’s trunk and open it. Tilting it, he spilled out gowns and shoes and toilet things, all soaked. He sorted through them hastily to see if he could find Tom Blackstone’s letter. Letter there was none, even in the little inlaid box that had been tucked under the bottom layer of her garments. John opened it and found only the earrings Captain Reynald had given her, with some hairpins and a few trinkets he suspected she’d stolen.

  He closed the box and became aware that Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley were watching him. “Just wanted to be certain sure she wasn’t robbed,” he said.

  “If you say so,” said Sejanus, raising one eyebrow.

  * * *

  They buried more bodies before they started back—with somewhat less ceremony, funerals being impractical when corpses were becoming so commonplace. Mrs. Waverly rose from where she had been tending the fire, and smiled to see what John carried.

  “My trunk!” she exclaimed. “Why, Mr. James, how dear, how thoughtful of you!” She ran to him and stood on tip
toe, pulling him down for a kiss.

  “It was a pleasure, ma’am,” said John. In his best bluff and honest manner, he added: “Mind, we had to open it to drain the water out, and your things fell out too, so they’re a bit disordered. But I put everything back in.”

  “You have my eternal gratitude,” said Mrs. Waverly. “What luck that we have fresh water! I can launder everything tomorrow. Do let me launder your shirts and stockings as well, Mr. James.”

  “I have shirts and stockings too,” volunteered Mr. Tudeley, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

  She made on a great deal over John that evening, serving him his coconut and whelks first, mixing him a treat of rum and coconut-water, and nestling up beside him when they sat by the fire afterward.

  The conversation ran on what they ought to look for next in the diving, whether the carpenter’s chest or the navigation gear, and from thence it proceeded to where they would go once they’d built their pinnace.

  “Mind you, we need to know whereabouts we are, first,” said John. “If we can find the charts and they ain’t too spoilt, we can chart a course. Can’t just sail off into the blue.”

  “How very wise, Mr. James,” said Mrs. Waverly, sliding her arm through his. He looked at her sidelong. “You and I, of course, ought to proceed to Leauchaud. Once we have resolved those matters concerning my poor husband’s estate, we might consider anything! Should you care to travel? Have you ever been to Paris?”

  “I was thinking of settling down in Port Royal,” said John, but the high-colored image of going to Paris with Mrs. Waverly dazzled him, as it had been meant to do. To clear his head of images of Mrs. Waverly in a lace peignoir, he said: “What’ll you do, Mr. Tudeley? Go on to Barbados?”

  “That’s a question, indeed, sir,” said Mr. Tudeley, staring into the fire. “You know…I don’t believe I shall. I ought to send to Arabella to let her know I’m well, of course. But, in a way, this whole mischance has been a blessing in disguise. A veil has dropped from my eyes, sir. I have perceived now that, life being so miserably brief and tenuous, one ought to spend it in what enjoyment one can, don’t you think? And the essentials of life are so much more easily come by in a place less constrained by Society.