Blessed Isle (10 page)

“You must let us out!” Garnet’s voice put an end to these idle thoughts. He sounded close above me, weary and hoarse and patient as though he had said these things a thousand times and was prepared to go on saying them until he was heard. “I am Lieutenant Littleton of the
Banshee
. This is Captain Thompson of the
Banshee.
We were shipwrecked. We have
nothing
to do with this.”

“What . . .?” I struggled to my knees, my head swimming, and he was with me at once, arms about my shoulders, steadying me. I almost closed my eyes, rested my world of aches against his strength, but as I looked around, I noticed for the first time the latticework of iron bands that surrounded us. I had woken in a cage, one of a dozen men crouched uncovered, unsheltered, on the quarterdeck of this unfriendly ship. Our fellow prisoners were watching us. Outside the bars, the lieutenant and midshipman of the watch had turned, regarding us like curious beasts in their very own menagerie.

It was as though, through long disuse, I had lost all the callouses on my soul. I felt the onlookers’ judgement as an unhardened hand feels the rope burn and cut as it pulls through. Over half a year I’d had to forget I was anathema, to forget I was a pervert, to forget I was something less than scum. I stiffened in Garnet’s arms, unable to bear their scrutiny. Looking down on me, he gave a little choking laugh, and let go.

I wanted so much to kiss him, and I could not. I had forgotten what that felt like. I had forgotten it profoundly and thoroughly, or I should never have agreed to come back.

He knelt back on his heels, his face shuttered and the expressive body I had learned to read so well held still, as if in pain. “Are you recovered, sir?”

“What . . . what is . . . ?” My mouth had dried, and tongue and mind stumbled together over our predicament.

The lieutenant untucked a cane from beneath his elbow as though he meant to beat the bars again and silence us. But he refrained. He was not the man who had struck me on the island, and there seemed to be a lurking fear in his eyes. His conscience, perhaps, sat uneasily within him.

“We are aboard HMS
Pandora
, sir,” said Garnet. “Captain Edward Edwards. Apparently HMS
Bounty
suffered a mutiny earlier this year, and the
Pandora
is hunting the mutineers down to bring them home for trial. We had the bad luck to pitch up on an island close to where the ship was lost. Now they think we were involved.”

“That’s . . .” I grasped the bars and pulled myself upright, pleased that after a moment of drilling nausea my head and stomach settled. “That’s nonsense. You, sir, what’s your name?”

The lieutenant was a young man, plump and blond, with a placid face and a haunted look. “You aren’t supposed to talk,” he said.

“Then how am I to persuade you I am speaking the truth?”
“That’s rather the point.” He licked the worried smile off his lips.
“Listen.” I let go of the cage, pulled my uniform coat straight so that he could see the insignia. “I have served on the
Pearl
, the
Yarmouth,
and the
Savage
, and lately on the
Barfleur
. My lieutenant here has served on . . .?”
“
Dragon
,
Inconstant
, and
Dreadnaught
, sir.”
“You should have no difficulty finding, among your crew, a shipmate who can recognise at least one of us. Unless you want to face the most appalling legal stink when we reach London, I suggest you make every effort to do so. Then let us out of here at once.”
I looked down at my fellow prisoners. They had expanded into the space where I had lain. There was now no place to sit not already occupied by legs. Mutineers. If that was not irony upon irony. Should we be convicted of mutiny, we would hang as though we had been convicted of love. What then had been the point of all my pretence?
A s
Pandora’s
lieutenant turned away, crooked a finger to summon one of the powder monkeys, I reached out and took Garnet’s hand. It surprised him into a smile that was quenched immediately as the doors to the captain’s cabin opened and a severe, dark-haired man came out.
I released Garnet’s hand with a speed that must have seemed suspicious, but I think the man’s mouth was compressed so much it could not tighten further. It dragged down at the sides as though fitted with an invisible bit.
“Captain Edwards?” I said. His hard gaze passed over my face like the beam of a searchlight, and moved on. He turned his back, cutting me dead. Rage consumed me—a lifetime’s rage, composed of all those moments as a tar I had been treated like this, like something inhuman. All those moments, struggling up the long ladder of my career, thwarted at every point by men like him. I burned with fury, and he strolled about the quarterdeck as though he was taking the air.
“Cheated by every servant, mistrusted by every commander, betrayed by every lover,” Garnet whispered. “If he’s ever had any at all.”
I do not wish to speak ill of my service, and indeed I have found many great and gallant men in the Navy. Men cheerful in the face of adversity, generous and even playful in everyday life, magnanimous in victory, and undaunted in defeat. But I have also known too much of this—the petty tyranny, the grinding, unrelenting disrespect. The moment Captain Edwards turned his back on me was, I think, the moment I fell out of love with my career.
It is too late now to cut a long story short, but I will endeavour not to protract it for very much longer. On Edwards’ fifth turn about the deck, the powder monkey returned, bringing with him, up the companionway, a rusty-aproned surgeon and, leaning on his arm, a man I knew. Ned Compton, coxswain’s mate in the
Yarmouth
, now holding in his bursten belly with a cut-down pair of lady’s stays. “Oh, aye, I know Mr Thompson, sir. Lieutenant in the
Yarmouth
, he was. Did hear he’d made captain of the
Banshee
. Congratulations to you, sir.”
“Thank you, Ned. It’s good to see you again.”
He chuckled. “Aye, main glad you must be right now.”
Things became a little more comfortable after that. They let us out. We were given hammocks to sling in the wardroom, and a change of clothes from the slop chest. Either by way of apology, or as a scheme to investigate us further, Edwards invited us to one of the most painful dinner parties I have ever attended, scrutinising my table manners, peppering us with suggestions of what we should have done to prevent the disaster to our fleet. “Also, I wonder,” he said, “what you found to occupy yourselves with, all that time alone on so blasted an isle.”
We made him some noncommittal answer but the thought lodged in my mind. As we plunged back into human society, played cards in the wardroom, stood watches for fellows who were grateful to take a few hours’ extra rest, the thought of what I had lost began to grow on me like a canker.
I became acutely aware of the space that separated me from Garnet. Hours spent either in solitude or in the company of other men seemed grey and barren. Yet my hours with him were a torment of constant awareness and yearning. Without him in the hammock beside me, hot and restless and fidgeting in his dreams like a big dog, I could not sleep. My heart seemed to beat in a cavern within my chest, its tiny flickering unable to fill the dark. A constant squirm of anguish lodged there like a worm in the flesh.
We breakfasted together and sat next to one another at the wardroom, and yet it felt to me as though he were dead and I was not being allowed to mourn.
Pandora
worked her way slowly through the islands of this little-known part of the world. The mutineers sweltered in their cage by day and shivered through the exposed nights. I found myself drawn to them, and would spend much of my free time standing by the ship’s rail as near to the cage as I could come. I knew I deserved to share their fate, and in sharing their penance, I felt a little calmer.
On our last night aboard as free men, Garnet joined me by the rail. The fitful wind veered into the east. About the bow the water broke into twin curves of luminescence, and the wake stretched out behind us in a sheet of pale green light. A moon like hammered gold hung above us. Other than ourselves, only a midshipman occupied the quarterdeck, and he drowsed by the capstan. From the forecastle came a mutter of voices speaking low and tense. I had noticed a deal of whispering aboard
Pandora
. She was not a happy ship.
Garnet turned his head to listen, and the faint gilded light flowed across his face. Something in the line of his throat, the shadow beneath jaw and cheekbone, and the little inwards tuck his mouth made at its ends stopped me dead. Pure beauty, almost too glorious to endure.
He looked at me, puzzled, as my mouth opened and my hands began to tremble. Such dark eyes, intimate as a man’s own fantasies. “Sir?” he asked, briefly uncertain. And then he understood. His mouth curved up, and his face lit with delight. He tugged me forward by the cuff. I swear to you I felt his touch on the material of my sleeve as though it were on my yard. I was mad—I freely admit it—mad with loss and need and regret. I think perhaps I wanted to be caught. I had tasted freedom and knew I could no longer live without it.
We made it no further than down the quarterdeck stair before he pulled me into the shadow of the great cabin, where between the ship’s boats and the arch of deck above lay a patch of shadow so dense we could not see each other, let alone be visible to others.
I hope those ladies who read this will forgive me for the comparison, but, ever had to piss? Ever had to hold it in so long it passed through pain to making you think you were going to die of internal strangulation if you did not let go? Ever have one of those dreams where you cannot find the privy, no matter how you search? You’ll sympathize with my state then. I wasn’t thinking. I’d got so used to having him when I wanted, I just couldn’t hold on any longer.
Dear God, the bliss! We were all mouths and teeth and heat. His hand is in my hair and the other hand’s down my trousers and he’s panting, “I never thought . . . oh Harry . . . I never thought I’d play this game with
you
.” And then the doors open and the captain comes out and everything shatters into smithereens like a plate dropped on a stone floor.
Disgrace.
Edwards paced up and down behind his desk, hands linked behind his back, lips pursed as though he had bitten into a lemon. Marines behind us, and our wrists tied with rope, and the cabin seemed to pulse ruby red with the force of everyone’s disgust.
I’d been afraid of it all my life, and here it was—exposure, ridicule, abomination, like being flayed and laid skinless on a nest of ants.
“My God.” Edwards turned and glared at us. “In front of my very cabin. Do you have no control at all? No self-respect?”
There’s a kind of joy on Garnet’s face, and seeing it shifts everything inside my head. By gradual stages, like sailing out of a fog, the obstruction cleared, my confusion lightened, my shame thinned and lifted; I understood. Garnet needed no refuge, no hidden isle moated all around by impassable sea. Inside himself, where no one else could touch him, he had learned how to be free. How not to be ashamed. “We thought you might like to watch, sir,” he said.
Edwards’ disapproval flickered for a moment. Something intense went through it, fast as lightning. It looked to me a lot like panic. The effort of compressing his mouth back into scalpel thinness made him dab at his forehead with his handkerchief. Reaching for his logbook, he opened it, took out the sheaf of ill-written notes that marked the latest page.
“I am”—he rustled through them, brought a sheet out and pressed it to his lips—“a little behind with my paperwork. I have not yet written up my log of the past fortnight.” Setting his elbows on the table, he steepled his hands, as if praying. “There is nothing in here to suggest we ever picked up two castaways from Ducie Island.”
I could all but hear the creak of strain as he winched his mouth up at the ends into the straight line of a satisfied smile. “Until I have recorded that fact, you are legally missing, presumed dead.” He crumpled the sheet on which, I guess, his record of our rescue lay scrawled, looked at me with the triumph of a man dismissing inconvenient tedium. Then he threw the only evidence of our existence out of the stern windows, where it bobbed for a while like a duckling in our wake, before sinking.
“If I never record it, there is no legal proof that you were ever here. This frees me of the necessity to bring you back to England for trial. For your guilt, I have the evidence of my own eyes.” Over my shoulder he exchanged a glance with the sergeant of marines. “There can be only one appropriate punishment. You will be hanged from the yard arm until you are dead, and your bodies disposed of in the sea.”
“Now, sir?” the sergeant asked, with what seemed to me excessive eagerness.
Edwards patted his forehead again with that limp handkerchief. His mouth reassumed its habitual downward tug. “Nonsense. You may manacle them both and secure them to the deck. We punish on a Saturday in this ship, gentlemen, come hell or high water. There is no reason to disturb the ship’s routine for something as sordid and unimportant as this.”
The night I spent shackled to the deck—the width of the ship between myself and Garnet— was, I think, the most formative night of my life. A Thursday night. I had two full days and nights to live. I was in the situation of which I had been afraid all my adult life, and every sailor gave me a kick or a curse as he passed. Yet, as the hours wore on, a sense of peace stole over me. I felt my heart beat in my chest and the blood course through my limbs. The stars still shone above me, and the black and silver sea bore me up as it always had. The sails creaked. The ship grumbled on to herself as though nothing had changed.
I had thought I would be crushed, did anyone ever find out about me. I thought the world itself would condemn and swallow me up. Instead, there was the moon gleaming like a sickle above. As its light hit the water, there came a great heave of silver, and a whirr, like wings, as a school of flying fish leapt out of their element and flitted beside us as though God were skipping stones.
Fear lifted off my chest like a boulder. I watched the sunrise with the eyes of one newly born. The worst had happened, and look, it was not so bad.
As soon as there was light to see, I caught Garnet’s eye and smiled. Had we been closer, I would have thanked him for persuading me out of my solitude and into this more fundamental freedom. I had been a coward for a very long time, and he in his absurd way had shown me how to be a man. His smile in return was dimpled with delight. I don’t believe he ever was afraid of anything.
They did not trouble to feed us. But, about midday, when both the captain and Lieutenant Hallett had gone below, Ned Compton gingerly brought us a dipperful of water each. As he leaned down to let me take the thing in my manacled hands, he made as though to scratch his nose, concealing his mouth beneath his hand. “You knows how to navigate, don’t you, sir?”
My peace stirred into a kind of puzzlement, threaded through with hope. “I do.”
“Your boy too?”
“My b—Mr Littleton, you mean?”
My boy?
As though we were spoken of together. As though the world knew us for a couple. It perhaps should not have done, but it filled me with insufferable pride. “Yes, he’s a very capable navigator.”
“Suppose you was plotting a long journey. What d’you need?”
I kept the dipper of water before my mouth as I answered, wondering if this was mutiny. Something about these seas appeared to encourage it. “To know where we start. Compass, charts. Sextant. A good watch. Maskelyne’s tables, if possible.”
“Right you are.” His withered eyelid drooped in a confiding wink, but he stood and hurried away before I could scratch the itch of my curiosity. As the day passed, I kept my eye on him and saw as a result that an understanding seemed to exist between Ned and a number of the
Pandora
’s tars. Meaningful nods abounded, the occasional slapped shoulder and raised eyebrow. There seemed more men busy tying down the ship’s boats than was strictly necessary in this weather.
But again, I let my tendency to prose on run away with me. I will be more succinct. I fell asleep with a feeling of anticipation, and was woken at three bells of the middle watch by a hand on my shoulder, and the vibration of a crowbar working the pin of my chains out of the deck. One of the ship’s boats was being swung out on the crane and lowered gently and quietly down. In another, already in the water, two shadowy shapes were shipping her mast while other men packed barrels under the thwarts.
I drew breath to say, “Not mutiny, then, but desertion?” but Garnet slid a silencing hand over my mouth and led me down into the stern of the second boat.
Pandora
had been working north up the coast of Australia, intending to return to England via the Endeavour Strait. Knowing this, we chose to brave the empty Pacific once more. We set the boats before the wind and scudded away into the east, making for Chile.
I shall not tell you the details of that long journey, for they are repetitive and dull. Our companions’ endurance for their evil-tempered captain and cold-eyed lieutenants had been pushed beyond healing by one too many insults. They had been planning their escape for some time, held back only by the knowledge that they had nobody among them capable of plotting an accurate course. Our appearance, with those very skills, had been taken as an indication that God was with us, and thus they found themselves happily inclined to ignore our crime.