Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  “Let me out! Maybe I can help. This is still my ship!”

  “Maybe if I can just dump the poor wretch over,” he said to Selena.

  “Ye jest stay put, Cap’n,” the guard retorted doubtfully. “I’ll reckon Master Fligh’ll be able to ’andle it…”

  “Jesus Christ,” Royce stormed, as more screams reverberated in the ship, and then there was a great commotion outside the door, and their guards yelled in horror. “’Ere ’e comes, Lord God. We got to…”

  “Let’s get out of here…”

  They fled, and then Selena heard another sound, like an animal panting in an agony too great to understand. A rattle was in the sound, too, like broken breath, or blood, or death…

  “Where’s m’ Selena? Where’s m’…lovin’ beauty?”

  Slyde.

  Selena hugged herself, and felt a terrible fear. With her eyes, she begged Royce to do something. Slyde battered feebly on the barrier, and one of the beams fell away. All the sailors had fled. The infected man was coming amongst them, driven by delirium, or frenzy, or the death throes themselves.

  Royce glanced around the room in desperation. All weapons had been taken from him. Another beam fell heavily out in the passageway, and the cracked, rended door began to sway.

  “We can’t let him in here,” Royce said, and seized a straight-back chair, advancing on the withering door.

  “Mr. Slyde,” he called, “go up on deck. Hear me, up on deck.”

  Panting and gasping were the only answers, and a muttered, “Selena!”

  She got out of the hammock, hastily put on the uniform, and stood behind Royce. Somehow, Slyde had managed to shove away the last of the bracing beams. The door fell in, and there he stood.

  Selena screamed in a horror so pure that it startled even Slyde, far gone as he was.

  It was incredible that he could still be alive, or able to move. He was naked, but for a ripped fragment of hospital gown that hung from his neck like a tattered cape. His body had been salved, to help heal the whip cuts, and he gleamed as if putrescent, but beneath the slime his flesh was black and getting blacker. Beside his genitals, high upon his inner thigh, was the tumor, black and malevolent, with a crust that was hard even to the eye. Blood leaked from his maddened eyes, and dripped from his mouth and nose, from his ears. Incongruously, Selena thought of McGrover. He was like the Black Death, which could travel anywhere, appearing with sudden, deadly surprise.

  “Help me, somebody,” Royce called. “Fligh. Bring a gun. Shoot this poor…”

  But, although the ship was filled with cries of alarm and consternation, no one came, and Royce did not expect help. Brandishing the chair at Slyde, he pushed him, animal-like, back into the passageway. Selena followed, a few yards behind him. Slyde’s great burst of manic energy was waning before their eyes, and although he tried to speak, no words were intelligible.

  “Go, go backward, slowly now,” Royce soothed, pushing the chair at the diseased man, and then, with a final lunge, they were out on deck in the open air. Crewman backed away, silent now.

  “All right, that’s it, Mr. Slyde…” Royce said, talking softly, moving Slyde toward the rail. The diseased man crumpled once to his knees, staggered back to his feet, mesmerized by the chair, by Royce’s soothing tones. And then they were six feet away from the rail, with Slyde’s blood tracking the deck. Then four feet away—how bright and blue the sky was, how clean the wind. And then Royce lunged forward, just as Slyde began to fall again, ramming the legs of the chair beneath his arms, and with a mighty groan of effort, shoved the poor seaman up and over the rail. He spun headfirst over the railing, but made no cry, and dropped straight to the embracing ocean. The chair fell after him, and bobbed there in the waves, marker on a watery grave. Slyde. It seemed years since Selena had met him in Liverpool.

  Involuntarily, Royce made washing motions with his hands, as if to cleanse himself, and retched abruptly.

  “There, that’s it, you fainthearts,” he said, turning to face the crew.

  He found himself encircled by naked swords and daggers and big-muzzled pistols with the hammers cocked back. Calmly, he reached out an arm, and Selena came to him.She felt enveloped by his strength, but she also felt the faintest tremor of tension pass through his body and into hers.

  “What’s this, now?” Royce asked the crew. His voice was calm and strong, but she could sense the effort required.

  There was no answer for a long minute. The men squinted against the sun, wet their lips. They were scared to death. Finally, Fligh spoke.

  “Better get back t’ yer cabin, Cap’n. An’ the wench, too.”

  “Why? Slyde’s gone, and I’m the one who…”

  “We thank ye fer that, we surely do, but…”

  “But what? Out with it, man.”

  “But we’re afraid ye’re contaminated. The plan’s the same. All of us’ll drop off at Tenerife, then ye can do what ye will.”

  Royce regarded them steadily for a long time. “Agreed,” he said then. “I require only a keg of fresh water from the hold. From the hold, not the galley, do you understand? And I will fetch it myself. And also I want fishing line, and hooks of various sizes. A piece of green wood, perhaps three feet long. That’s all.”

  He waited, and the men looked at one another, puzzled. At length, there appearing to be no threat of any kind, it was agreed.

  “What have you thought of?” Selena asked, when, back in the cabin with the water and supplies, Royce barricaded the cabin from the inside.

  “Simple,” he explained. “There are bound to be a number of others infected, merely by chance. Slyde’s food came from the galley, and his dirty tray was returned there…”

  “But so were ours. Our food also came from…”

  “No, there’s a small hope. My food is prepared separately. Now, I have water untouched since we left Virginia, and…”

  And now all they had to do, for four more days, was to catch fish from the afterdeck in the stern, or perhaps shoot a gull with the bow and arrow he fashioned of green wood and fish line.

  The first day passed slowly, and carried with it a quality of waiting. Waiting for a fish to take hook, for a gull to land on the coiled anchor rope near the stern porthole.And waiting—the shipboard silence was more than ominous—for the invisible enemy Slyde had left with them. Royce was tense all day, shamed by having lost control of his ship, by not being able to protect her better than he had, and by the many complications that awaited at Tenerife. Near twilight, a small eel took the hook. Royce cooked it on the cabin’s small, well-protected iron stove. Sickened, initially, by its appearance, Selena was surprised to find that it did not taste bad at all, but hunger may have helped her in that judgment.

  They slept, though poorly, until the first of the screams. Then they did not sleep.

  “It’s here,” Royce said simply, and she clung to him.

  Compared to that night aboard the Highlander, the trek through Scotland with her Grandmother’s body seemed like the stroll of lovers in a summer meadow. After the first scream of terror—some sailor felt the weakness hit him, felt the ugly tumor swelling in his flesh, like a form of lust for which there was no satisfaction—there were many more. Then there were gunshots, and cries of rage as men fought, some to stay aboard, others to cast them over. As if that would have helped. In the cabin, Royce tried to doze, watching the door.

  “They don’t know yet,” he told her, “but one or the other of them is bound to remember that I took fresh water in here with us. It can’t help them now—it may not even help us—but they won’t be thinking logically. They’ll blame us, and try to save themselves by killing us.”

  Selena believed him. Death bred death, as terror bred terror. Man’s grasp on reality, fragile enough on land, unsettled by the relentless power and majesty of the sea, became completely unhinged in the face of terrible death.

  “It’s the principle of sacrifice,” Royce explained, with his old, cynical smile. She was glad to see
it. Things seemed more normal, less frightening, when viewed with his cynicism. Perhaps that was its purpose after all. “Men have always believed that killing someone else, whether for politics, or religion, or law, or just for the plain dark malice of it, would somehow help to save themselves. I don’t believe in the madness of those forms because I see all the horror they do.”

  This time, Selena had no answer for him. It was hard to believe in anything redemptive, with the crewmen going mad all over the ship, with uncertain salvation still days away. Nevertheless, she tried to pray in moments when he wasn’t watching.

  They made it through the second day with an exotic, purple-and-orange-feathered seabird. Royce killed it with an arrow, to which he had tied a fish line, and dragged it back up to the cabin, to clean and cook it there. Its flesh was tender and crumbly, and gave off a natural juice that tasted like sugared water. Their hunger satisfied, they found even the screams on deck less terrible.

  On the third day, there was nothing. Water ran low, and the heat increased. The ship was silent, yet still it shot southward, driven by the wind. How many men were left to tend the sails? Who was in command? They must be only one day from port, if they were on course.

  “I’ve got to go up on deck,” Royce told her.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, I want you to stay here where it’s comparatively safe.”

  “But I can’t. If something happened and you didn’t return, I’d have to come anyway. I couldn’t stand not knowing.”

  “I’m thinking of the Black Death.”

  “It’s all over the ship,” she said, “and we haven’t gotten it. Maybe we won’t.”

  “You don’t want to take a chance like that.”

  “I have to. I’ll be careful.”

  In the end, he relented, and removed the barricade. Slowly, they made their way down the empty passageway, hand in hand. On the gangway leading to the main deck, they saw the first dead crewman. His skin was black, distended lips a brilliant red. In his death agony, he had literally clawed through his canvas breeches, trying to tear the tumor from his flesh. He had failed.

  Then they came out onto the main deck and into the sun.

  “My God, my ship,” Royce cried. Selena realized, from the tremor in his voice, just how much he relied upon the mighty Highlander. And what they saw was ghastly, the composite of a life of nightmares. They did not know how many crewmen had gone overboard, or how many were sick or dead below decks. But it was not difficult to count the corpses sprawled on top, or captured by death in strange postures, as if attempting to run for the railing. In the rigging of the ship, high up in the sails, dead men were tied. They had tied themselves into their positions in order to tend the sails, so that the ship might reach the Canary Islands. So they might reach what they considered was safety and surcease. Even now, stricken men moaned, dying, high in the masts, their eyes on the far horizon. Hoping. Hoping until the last breath had left them.

  “Worse than I thought,” Royce muttered. “There’s no way we can sail her without a crew. It’s impossible…”

  There was a drawn-out moan from the bridge, something like a call for help. But no one was visible there.

  “Come on,” Royce told her. He took a pistol from the belt of one of the dead men, and motioned her to follow him. She was thinking that he ought not have touched the weapon—it might be contaminated—but it was too late, and they climbed quickly to the bridge.

  It was Lieutenant Fligh, on his back, conscious but failing fast.

  “Fligh!” Royce exclaimed, keeping his distance. “When did it hit you?”

  “Two days ago, sir. I’m sorry. It just…came down on me like a load of stone dropped from a crane. I…”

  “Here, I’ll get you some water…”

  “No, no…too late…too late for that, just…”

  “How many are left alive?”

  “Don’t…don’t know. At least eighteen overboard, some ill, some dead from…fighting. I…I came up here…alone…thought it would…” he tried to laugh, but it was a hoarse cackle, mixed with blood and spittle “…would save me. Not more than twelve left…I think, probably all sick or…dead…”

  Before their eyes, he faded. His head lolled, and his limbs jumped spasmodically. Selena, sickened, put her hand to her mouth.

  “Fligh. Wait, what’s our course? What’s our course, man?” Royce asked.

  The lieutenant’s eyes opened slightly, as his failing brain registered the question. He smiled slightly; it looked like a leer.

  “I did my duty, Cap’n,” he wheezed. “We’re straight for the Canaries. Steady as she goes.”

  One hand went up, an abortive parody of a last salute, and then he went into a last frenzy, and was dead, and there was nothing but the steady rise and fall of the Highlander, and the driving wind.

  “Oh, God, my poor ship,” Royce murmured once again, looking up into the masts where dead sailors stared openeyed forever toward a horizon they had already crossed. “Let’s go below. The weather’s holding, and the wheel’s locked in place. I’ll do a sextant reading to make sure Fligh was right. We should reach the Canaries in about twenty hours. That would be dawn tomorrow.”

  “What about these men?”

  “What about them?”

  “Aren’t you going to…do something?”

  “I don’t want to touch them. It’s bad enough that they carried the germ. Now that they’re dead, the bugs will abandon them and seek new…”

  He dropped the pistol with a grimace of disgust, and wiped his hand on his uniform. “Jesus!”

  “What about the ship?”

  “I’ll set a fuse to the powder kegs, and blow her to kingdom come.”

  “But…”

  “There’s no other way. Even if she were safe, I’d never be able to man a crew for her again.”

  Royce remained confident. In spite of the fact that the two of them could no longer maneuver the ship, it was possible to steer it with the rudder. Royce would do that, and carry them past the eastern tip of the Canaries. He would rig the fuse and light it. They would drop off and row to shore in the dinghy, and make their way to Tenerife, to pick up a ship for America. And the noble Highlander, sailing into the South Atlantic, would blow sky-high, with her cargo of death aboard.

  They were three in the hammock that night: Royce, and Selena, and fear.

  There was a fourth in the morning.

  Her body knew it before her mind did, knew it before her mind was fully awake. It was very hot, and wet. Yet, next to her, Royce was shivering, trying to pull the leopard-skin coverlet over every inch of his hunched, shaking body. She leaped from the hammock.

  “Oh, no!”

  His perspiration had soaked through the hammock, leaving a dark, wet mark all along it underside, and even the leopard skin was dripping.

  Her cry shook him from the merciful sleep to which he had clung.

  He knew immediately.

  “Sorry,” he said, trying to smile. “I believe there’s been a change in plans.” Instantly, he was shaken, a spasm of shivering from which he could not escape. Selena was reminded of her father, sick in the winter cave. Almost everything since that time had been disastrous, until she’d met Royce again. And now…

  “Is there something I can do?” she asked, going to him, putting her hand on his dripping, fever-hot forehead. “Something…”

  He pulled himself out of the convulsion by an effort of the will.

  “No, no…” pushing her hand away “…you mustn’t touch. No! It’s dawn now. Listen. Listen, Selena. Go up on deck. Hurry. The islands should be out ahead of us. Remember, we must pass them by, but closely. You have to go on the bridge, and adjust the ship’s wheel. Point her toward the edge of an island, but not too close to shore. We can’t afford to run her aground. The islanders would know of the plague then, and kill you when you go ashore…”

  You? That meant herself. Alone, And that meant he…

  Royce saw it in her
eyes.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Now go on deck, and do as I told you.”

  In a daze, she went down the passageway, past the dead crewmen, whose bodies were swelling now, horribly bloated and discolored. Somehow, she was thinking, I’ll find a way to take him with me. Her concentration helped her block out the odor of decay that hovered about the ship, and far ahead the low green sweep of the Canary Islands was like a cool paradise, a promised land. They would reach them somehow, together.

  As best she could, Selena judged the course of the Highlander, and it seemed to her that they were drifting too much seaward. Holding her breath, she climbed the ladder to the bridge—Fligh was stone-still, watching her with dead eyes—and struggled with the knots he had used to fix the ship’s wheel in position. Above, the dead sailors waited to see how she would do. You have the wind, they told her. You have the wind of God, and we’ve given you full sail. Now all you have to do…

  All she had to do was turn the wheel. But which way and how much? Gingerly, she experimented. She turned it one notch to the left, which, she thought, would bring the Highlander closer in to the land, but after several minutes, she saw that, if anything, the ship was heading westward, farther out to sea. She remembered something Brian had said a long time ago, about the rudder controls on his sailboat. Opposite. You turn left when you wish to go right. She overcompensated the first time, but after ten or fifteen minutes she was confident that they would pass no farther than a quarter mile from the edge of the nearest large island.

  Now the problem was to save Royce, somehow. She raced down from the bridge, back toward the gangway, devising plans for getting him into a dinghy. But he met her, half-dressed, staggering out on deck into the sun. He was leaning on a sword, but immediately knelt down on the deck. He took a measure of their course.

  “You did well, Selena,” he said, with effort. “There are many places we might have sailed…”

  “Stop it! Now, here, let me help you. Get up. We’re going to the lifeboat…”

  Royce raised his hand in demurral.

  “You are,” he managed.

  They looked at each other.