Alias Hook (20 page)

“Duty?” I echo. “To whom?”

“To my son. To David. To myself. What right had I to toss away what had been so cruelly stolen from them? So I sold our flat in town and went to live with my aunt in the Scilly Islands. Your childhood playground, as I recall.”

“Yes. She was a widow herself by then, my last living relation.” Stella gives her head a wistful shake. “It’s such a rugged, wild place at the end of the world.”

“I know the Isles.”

“But they were all in such a great hurry to cheer me up, my aunt and her friends. Accused me of living too much in the past.” She makes a wry mouth. “The last place I wanted to be! I couldn’t even write any more. Every word was a complaint, or an outcry, or some mawkish ode dragging me back into the damned past. So I took myself back to London, found work in a military hospital. They were always in need of nurses, experienced or otherwise.”

“A strange choice of professions, did you mean to escape the specter of war,” I observe.

“I so wanted to be of use to somebody. But I was surrounded every day by sickness, hopelessness, dying. London was a burned-out wreck. When my aunt became gravely ill, I went back to Scilly; it rallied me out of myself for a while, tending her.” She sighs. “It was a blessing when she went; her life had become so diminished. But it was another ending. That’s when my dreams turned beyond rational time and place, beyond war and its never-ending aftermath. Beyond the world the grown-ups made.”

“The Neverland,” I murmur.

“My dreams were unrelenting. That’s when I found that old book again, the one signed by Mr. Barrie, in a box of things my aunt was storing for me.
Believe,
he wrote. I began to dream of the Neverland as a real, physical place—this bay, the beach, the wood, the laughter of children, they were all so real! A haven of childhood innocence, a place undefiled by war and poverty and hatred, where children might need a mother, where I might finally do somebody some good. Then my dreams became more abstract, as if some force were calling me.”

I peer at her. “You never saw who? Did someone speak to you?”

But she shakes her head. “It was never a conversation. It was more like a sense of exhilaration, like a flying dream. It was irresistible! I just knew I’d find something wonderful here. I got that situation in Kensington Gardens, worked for nothing, even used my maiden name, to start completely over. I had to find some place untouched by the war, to recover from my losses. I needed to come back to life.”

“You might have married again,” I suggest. “There was always a brisk trade in widows in my day.”

“But how could I confess what I’d done?” she beseeches her plants.

“Done?” I echo.

She glances up, startled that her words were spoken aloud. “I let him go,” she says quickly. “David. I wasn’t … enough for him, somehow, not enough to keep him at home. That’s what his mother said, anyway.”

“That is the spitefulness of females, Parrish.”

She shakes her head sadly. “She was grieving too. Anyway, I couldn’t reveal myself to strangers, could I? I was still too raw.”

“You’ve revealed a great deal to me,” I point out.

Her mouth tilts briefly up. “I take liberties, I know.” She slides a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “But … it’s different with you.”

“Because I’m only make-believe?”

She does not smile, but studies me frankly. “Because you’re the first person in ages who seems to have any idea what I’m talking about. Men in my world don’t speak of such things. They hold it all in. With what they went through in the war, who can blame them?”

“I’ve had two hundred years to keep silent,” I mutter. “They’d not care for it so much had they no other choice.”

She peers at me for another long interval. “Whatever are you doing here, Captain?”

And I begin to tell her some of my own history, my sordid piratical career, as much of my dealings with Proserpina as I can recall. I spare her nothing of the Pan’s wiles, so she might grasp exactly where her reckless dreaming has got her. My words, halting at first, begin to flow irresistibly; it’s an enormous relief to have them out at last. Thus we while away the afternoon, exposing our darkest sorrows to the pitiless Neverland sun.

Chapter Sixteen

THE PIRATES ARE AFRAID

We are like motley dancers in an opera ballet. I pirouette along my quarterdeck, and the two men on watch continue their stately march across the deck on opposite sides of the waist. I pause to sniff the scented air, listen for war drums, idly scratch at a flea bite, and my cutthroat
corps
pause as well, alert to my every breath, now that I am magical. I sigh and wave them back to their duty.

Once it was my habit under sail to prowl my quarterdeck at night, where the sting of salt spray and fresh breeze might harry my wits into better order. It’s an altogether different experience aboard the gloomy
Rouge
with her canvas all reefed up, scarcely ever a breath of wind on the still water, and the unchanging Neverland stars as stationary as a painted scrim.

I’ve drunk not one drop of spirits tonight, despite the presence of all the ghosts Stella Parrish and I have unleashed between us. I thought my cabin would feel crammed to overflowing with them, that they would suffocate me. But loosed from inside me after so long, they evaporated into nothing in the night air. Indeed, my cabin felt vast and empty after Stella left it. A part of me is incensed that she beguiled so many secrets out of me, yet I confess I reveled in the gluttony of our conversation, came away reeling and glassy-eyed, like a bumpkin at a village feast. And therein lies the danger. I can’t let her become indispensible to me, with her healing balms and her clever talk. I can’t give Pan any opportunity to use her against me.

Surely naught but staggeringly poor judgment landed her here, as is the case with my men, indefinable yearning beyond all reason. Still, it’s remotely possible that one of them, not a boy, as Stella thought, regrets coming here and longs to go back. Might that be what summoned her? Might that be the journey, the quest in progress?

One of the men on watch is Filcher, so I trot down the ladder and cut him off amidships for a private word while his counterpart at the opposite rail scurries gratefully off. If he is surprised that I inquire after the former lives of the men, he dares not let on.

“Well, they don’t talk about it much,” he begins hesitantly. “It ain’t real, like, the time before.” He frowns, absently scratches at the red rag around his head. “Flaxy might’ve got a girl in trouble and run off. Nutter, he’s mad about football; busted up a few ’eads over it, I reckon. Burley were a fisherman. Lived with ’is mum all ’is life, then she died. Swab were a drifter, I guess, lived all over. Brassy come from council flats, ’is folk was foreigners. Gato were only a little bleeder in the Spanish war. Lost ’is family.”

“And Dodge?”

“Bit of a toughie, that one,” Filcher shrugs. “Fights and dice.”

“And yourself?”

He scowls at the phantom memory. “The peelers was after me, wasn’t they? It’s the choky for me, next time.”

History repeats itself with my men, so it seems. As boys and men, they only dream themselves here when the other world is closing in.

“Do any of them seem sorry to be here?” I venture carefully.

Filcher guffaws in disbelief. “Sorry? Where else would we go?”

Where, indeed? “What about Jess?” I force myself to ask, dreading the answer. Did that affable fellow send a dream to the stars, begging for release, which was answered by some mysterious power? Was it his destiny to go home, until I got him murdered on my quarterdeck?

But Filcher snorts again. “Jess? ’e loved it ’ere, Cap’n, more’n any of us! It was always ‘appy days with Jess.”

I thank him and send him below to fetch Burley. The square, solid shape of my bo’sun emerges from the forward hatch, and I join him at the rail as Filcher resumes his place on watch. Burley has brought up his pipe and lights it with relish. He never smokes below decks; he is seaman enough for that.

“I’ve heard how you tried to save Jesse,” I tell him. “I appreciate all you did.”

“Wish we might’ve done more,” Burley sighs around his pipe, smoke curling above his head.

“I know.” I gaze out at the vivid stars, the distant dark rim of the fog bank. The moon is not yet risen over the island. “Tell me, Mr. Burley, have you noticed anything … odd, lately?”

My bo’sun says nothing at first, although his expression is plain enough. What is not odd in the Neverland? Something completely unremarkable, that would be the odd thing.

“Something not seen before, out in the bay, perhaps?” I try again. “The sky?” I know not what form these other signs may take, if indeed they are any more than the sheerest whimsy, but fisher folk always have one eye on the sea and the other on the stars.

The Cornishman chews thoughtfully on his pipe stem. “Can’t say as I have, Cap’n. Am I t’be looking for oonything?”

“No, no. It’s nothing.” And I thank him and send him off to the galley for another bottle of rum. I tell him I desire the men to drink a round in honor of Jesse, and watch him amble off.

Unpromising material for Stella’s heroic journey, my men, in flight from a world to which they’ve severed all ties. Clearly, Stella Parrish herself is the only one on a journey here. But where will it lead? And what has it to do with me?

“We’ll have you whittling again in no time, Maestro,” Stella assures me in the morning, tucking in the tail of a fresh cloth bandage as I gingerly flex my hand. With my shirt cut open all down the front, I can keep half of it on while she tends me, and not subject her eyes to the wreckage of my entire body.

I note that she is down to a last few meager bulbs and stems from her store of medicinal plants. “I can always go back to the Fairy Dell,” she shrugs, scooping up these last few crumbs into a scrap of cloth.

“At the expense of your wits? I think not, Parrish.”

But it might be useful to produce some sort of restorative against our next skirmish with the boys, as she has used up all her remedies on me. As she tidies up, I go into the galley, signaling Brassy to come with me and sending for Filcher as well. Cookie is clearing up after the morning mess, and we gather near the brick oven as I explain my purpose.

“Look for any sort of small glass vial, stoppered with cork or wax,” I tell them. “A dark liquid inside, with a slightly purple cast when held up to the light.” How to describe the scent, I wonder, the sweet, seductive allure of oblivion.

“Wot’s it for?” Filcher asks.

“It’s medicinal,” I say lightly. “To ease pain.”

“Like morphine?” suggests Brassy. “In the war.”

The name charms me. Morphine, the gift of Morpheus, yes, exactly. “Our supplies have, ah, run low, but there might yet be a bottle or two secreted about the ship. Brassy, look to your cupboard, Cookie, your pantry, Filcher, wherever you happen to be. There are extra rum rations for any man who—”

A cry burbles up from on deck. “Boys!”

I bolt out into the passage. Already I hear a shriek of pipes, a far-off chant. “Hook! Hook!”

Damnation! I’m scarce given—what has it been, three days, four?—to recover myself, and now the little maniac is back to finish the job aborted last time by my untimely demise. I should have known he’d not rest until his boys cut down every last man in my crew. And not only men, not this time.

“Nutter!” I roar, as my head emerges above the deck. “Battle stations! Shields!” Gato is on lookout aloft, Swab and Sticks on watch, shouting at the sky. The rest are still below, although Nutter’s red head shoots up the forward hatch at the first whiff of battle. “Men, to the magazine—”

“Captain.”

The quiet composure of Stella’s voice startles me into silence. She’s in the shadows at the foot of the ladder behind me, peering up at me. “Tell him no,” she says.

“Madam?” I gape.

“Peter. Say no to him,” she says again. “Don’t answer, don’t go up. Send your men below and batten down the hatches, or whatever it is you do. Don’t engage him.”

By God’s bleeding thorns, she’s serious! “They will slaughter us all!” I sputter.

“Not if you don’t play.”

“But that would be the baldest cowardice!” I exclaim.

“It’s idiocy to let him goad you into a battle you can’t win!” she insists. “Why risk the lives and limbs of your men over nothing? To amuse the boys? Who must die this time to prove your manhood? It won’t be you!”

My phantom hand aches to strike, the impulse bolts through my arm, I’m near enough to slash her wayward tongue out of her head. But that won’t make her words any less true. What can more deaths possibly achieve? How many more must die? The circles of Hell already teem with my former crews, and yet my exile continues. I hesitate for a crucial instant, my hook half-raised. Stella stands her ground.

“Codfish! Codfish!” comes the distant wheedling of the boys.

Am I to lead my men into further bloodshed over the taunting of boys? They expect no less, Nutter halfway to Long Tom, bawling lustily for his crew, the others erupting out of hatches, diving for their weapons, itching for my orders. That’s how it’s always been.

“They’ll think me a coward,” I protest. How then shall I command them, protect them?

“Let them live to think it,” Stella urges. “Prove you are stronger than all of them. Resist him. Refuse him. Change the game.”

Can such a thing be possible? If she is wrong, my men will pay in blood, but they are dead men anyway if the battle goes on. “Deck, there!” I shout, still staring down at Stella. “Below with you! All of you!”

Their responses are shocked wheezes, profanity, blustery outrage.

“That’s an order!” I spring up the ladder and out on deck. “Nutter! Gato! All of you below!”

They bleat as if I’m denying their rum ration, not protecting their sorry lives. It’s plain they think me in an advanced stage of imbecility, but I herd them below as the cloud of boys approaches. All but Nutter, lingering at the gun, shaking with fury.

“Goddamit, Captain…”

“Damn you if you disobey me!” I rumble at him, fingers at my sword hilt. He wants to rage at someone; his golden eyes are feral with it. But it won’t be me. Steel rattles in my scabbard before he backs up one step, but my fury is colder than his.