Deluded Your Sailors (17 page)

‘Too thinly dressed for heavy weather,' he shouted. ‘Stay here.'

Lamplight danced as I tried to keep my balance and decipher the weighted-down charts. All squiggles and lines to me then, incomprehensible art, only the krakens and the four winds making the least bit of sense. I curled myself into a little ball in a corner.

The storm eased. I returned to the deck. Colder breezes now, much colder, and the water looked beaten smooth. The clouds raced, and ice chunks bobbed. Atthey, helmsman now, eased us back on course. The carpenter nursed two broken fingers, and I bound them the way Atthey had tied mine. The carpenter healed up fine, after. Captain Walters stood fore with Rattlebags, inspecting damage. The boatswain leaned on the charthouse wall, cheeks green and lips blue. A rough time. But Coltman, ha, he took my shoulder like the captain did and leaned down so I could not shrug him off or escape his speech.

‘I promised to teach you plaindealing. Recall that? This storm tonight, I should have died, should have pitched headlong from the mainmast to die at your feet. But Atthey saved me. Think on it, little kitten. I did not die tonight for the same reason I found and took you.' Rattlebags sighted Coltman talking to me, frowned and strode toward us. Coltman lifted his hand from me. ‘Meant to be,' he said, giving me the nod and the wink and then tending to a loose line. I'd completely forgotten my lanyard and knife.

Atthey called me over. Smiling but breathing hard, he nodded toward the sails, all rounded out in the wind. ‘Full and by, Kit, full and by. Graceful canvas, no luff, no shiver. Unlike you. Afraid now, with the storm over? No shame in it. Be plenty of men afraid of a storm. Be shaking all over myself, save I've got the wheel. See Morris there, got that fine tremble? Poor bastard's in pain, too. Nice work, your binding his fingers; I saw that. Rattlebags and the boatswain, see how they cross their arms? That's for the fear they forgot to feel. Best cure for storms, this is, sailing full and by, when God in His grace allows. Feel those winds? Naught else like those fair beating winds after roughery. Fit to lift you up like some little bird. A kittiwake, you, the smallest one but hunting the furthest out to sea. On fair beating winds. I promise you, we'll die a dry death yet.'

Atthey died the following forenoon watch. Starboard bow, he stood, skin the colour of a seagull's wing or fog late in the day. I was aft, for he'd set me to practice my stitching and bowlines, and I oozed catarrh. He stopped. Just stopped. Then his mouth hitched up on the right, like he'd gotten stuck on a word, and he took three steps sidewise. Those three steps, no good dance. I stood up and drew breath to call Rattlebags, who worked at fixing the mainmast. Atthey fell. Over the side. I ran fore and got to the bow in time to see Atthey's descent. Atthey, living still, paddled but quickly lost his strength. He sank feet first, eyes up, hands curled near his shoulders as though ready to hoist himself over a spar. Ice chunks keeled deep, and Atthey's body caught on one and then slipped below.

Passing ancient rocks and more conifers than the men of England got hairs on their heads, we made Christiania the following night. Much like coming at Newfoundland. Rattlebags asked permission to scandalize the rigging and thereby show we mourned. Captain Walters assented so quickly that his words got tangled up. The cargo kept us busy, and I had to help lift on top of running messages,
Bon Wally
being short good as two hands with the carpenter's fingers fresh broke.

I hardly believe I've spoke all this to you when I've told no other man of Coltman. Not even our shared employer, though that canny owl likely guessed.

Ned Coltman caught me staring at the Christiania docks there maybe our third day. He leaned close and asked if I wanted to starve on a foreign street or pay little fees for the privilege of staying on board. I said naught to that dog-fucker. Rattlebags intervened; he often did. Soon Rattlebags set me half a dozen long tasks, all a way of keeping me close by.

‘I failed Atthey,' he said to me.

As we took departure from Norway, Rattlebags set me to counting ice-strays. He said, ‘Can't help thinking some great berg mourns her wandered strays.' He taught me my letters that voyage back, and if I did a lesson well, he'd tell me a story. Don't remember most of them. One night he told a story about names. ‘Be calling you just Kit from now on,' he began. ‘Kit from Christopher. Aye, thought that might please you. You'll find much power in names, Kit, and loss, and foolishness. My surname, Rattlebags, be bad enough, but my Christian name before it sounds like a mistake: Ezekiah. My poor mother, what was she thinking? Never get lost in a crowd now, will I, straggle-headed Ki Rattlebags? I hope the boatswain in the story remembers to call me by name. He hardly bothers with a name, just calls. And one mustn't miss his call. Tis a story I heard a long time ago. Ancient days, now.

‘Sailor man, he's got a few scarce hours to call his own, and he spends them crawling along a strange shore, his ship putting in for water. And his ship's well in sight, so he relaxes, for the vigilance and the watches have worn him out. Seashells in easy sight, too, all pearly rainbows, just begging him to pick them up and warm them in his hands. The sun beats down on our sailor man, but a fair breeze tempers the heat. He picks up more of the shells, and some shiny rocks, and a piece of driftwood. Sailor-man gets desperate. He wants to steal all those shells and rocks and stray wood from that sunlit beach, stuff it all under his clothes and haul it aboard, but he knows, you see, he
knows
that once he snatches the pretty things from the beach he'll never see their colours again. Already the sun's dried the rocks he took, and they're gone dull. He brings his spilling handfuls up to his face but nearly drops them, because all he can smell is the death of what once lived. And his ship's ready to depart. Sailor-man, he's all taken by his pretty things like they was wife and children. Boatswain calls, calls him by name, threatens to tie his arms and legs and bundle him aboard like a sheep, because the ship needs him.'

Rattlebags tucked loose hair behind his ears, and I asked him what the sailor-man did.

‘Story never says,' Rattlebags told me. ‘Frightens me sometimes, like the nennorluk tales.'

Lieutenant, I must ask your assistance again. Explanations dry me out.

Truly, I thank you.

Know you the nennorluk? It comes from these waters, just further north. ‘The nennorluk,' Rattlebags told me, ‘is worse than the kraken. I know, because a Labrador Eskimo once told me of it. Some Englishman befriended him and taught him proper language, persuaded him to cross the sea and be a living prize of brave exploration. The Englishman died of the bloody flux not a week out. How many ways at all can a man die at sea? So this Labrador man, he landed in Plymouth, speaking some English. The rest of his story he drew. Could make some fine sketches, that man. Black eyes. Black hair down to his waist, beautiful as a woman's. Cheekbones like an adze. Told me of the nennorluk in words and pictures. His own father saw it. The thing surfaced, shedding ice pans and rolling a berg. (Harsh voice, the nennorluk has, worse than thunder, and when the Labrador man made the noise for me, the other men in the tavern called him a devil.) Spreading the folds in its skin out, like sails, it climbed up to the shore. Think on it, Kit: it walks the sea-bottom til it comes ashore to eat men. Fast as fire, the Labrador man said, faster than their white bears. When the Eskimos first saw the Spaniards' sails, they thought the nennorluk had come.

‘Two moons, your eyes. Nennorluk, oh my, tis the likes of the foolishness I'd burn Atthey's patience with. He'd get all angry and sneer at me, tell me I both thought too much and not enough. Did I tell you my dream about going home? I hate it, and I keep trying to change it, but it always ends the same. I'd got a long shore leave, so I walked days and days to my parents' house. Gone, they were. Moved, lost, dead? No one knew, and I knew no one. I could walk through that house with my eyes closed, yet no one remembered the name Rattlebags. And I had to turn round and walk back to my ship.'

Some four days passed before he told me another story.

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and her first mate learnt me good lessons. How to hide right where people think they can see, how to listen, how to furl and how to climb. Captain Walters said I looked like a ferret, slipping in and out of sight, only I'd got more teeth. ‘Slowly, Kit. A man'd think the devil himself stalked you, hooves scraping the floor and tail hissing through the dust.'

I learnt to be useful, so that by our return to Bristol, neither Walters nor Rattlebags would wish to see me go. Solo glymjacking be risky. I'd be ate in no time, the likes of Coltman not near rare enough. Like the hunting animals, they are, all with slightly different appetites, and God didn't see fit to give them a smell. But three meals a day and a blind captain needing his own glymjack? I sailed with them almost two years. Crew changed, but Walters, Rattlebags, Coltman and I remained. After Christiania, we returned to Bristol, traded cargo, and set for Harbour Grace, Newfoundland.

Walters got blinder, and Rattlebags quietly commanded that ship. We pretended not to notice. I often caught Rattlebags praying in the starboard bow. He didn't look like he prayed, standing there with his hands crammed in his pockets, but as
Bon Wally
and the swell danced him, he muttered questions at the sky. So I took to listening. Not that tis always easy to hear a private conversation on deck, but Rattlebags needed to hear his own words, so now he spoke them clear. He called himself a proud dissenter cursed with questions, asked about heavy cargo and why he deserved it. He never asked God to solve the problem of the cargo, whatever twas, but submitted to it, saying ‘Tis Thy plan and Thy need. But please, tell me why.'

Captain Walters got a bit touched there towards the end, no question, but Rattlebags had the harder time of it. Walters kept thinking we all wanted to disobey him. He could hardly stay awake, let alone stand upright. He left navigation and command more and more to Rattlebags, but poor Rattlebags needed to sleep, too. Coltman helped, but Coltman could not read a chart. I could; Rattlebags had seen to that. One day Rattlebags got feverish, and by the next watch he lay splayed out with the flux. Captain Walters stumped on deck, and he didn't know whether to yarr or lead. All he wanted was to sleep.

We veered off course in no time. I made frequent excuse to leave the deck – muttering about flux and having shared some scrap off Rattlebags' plate – to sneak a study of the charts. We'd deviated badly. The water offered no check, no guidance, and the helmsman obeyed the captain. Rattlebags felt it, felt
Bon Wally
strain and shift. He tried to get out of his hammock and come on deck, but he fell and cut his face again, other cheek this time. He'd got himself part way to the charthouse when I met him.

‘Tell captain I beg a word.'

After much persuasion, I got Walters below. By now Rattlebags had made the charthouse. Dizzy, squinting, and newly sharp-boned in the slush lamp's greasy light, Rattlebags begged for answers. ‘Sir, why did we change course?'

‘We've done no such thing,' said Captain Walters.

Rattlebags looked to me, and I nodded, right subtle, but Captain Walters, still touching my shoulder, felt the movement. ‘Kit, what be this, collusion? Rattlebags, get back to your hammock.'

‘Aye, sir, hammock,' said Rattlebags, first glancing at the chart notes. He read the plotted course to the captain and asked if we sailed it.

‘I just told you we sail it,' said Captain Walters. ‘Now get below.'

Rattlebags returned to his hammock, and Captain Walters and I got back on deck. Not too long after, Rattlebags peered out the charthouse. I lied to Captain Walters about some foolishness Coltman did not commit, for a change, and Walters strode fore, ready to lace into him. I figured that would keep them both busy and leave Rattlebags the room to whisper corrections to the helmsman. But Walters turned his path in the bow and wound back toward the helm on the larboard side, standing a moment directly between Rattlebags and the charthouse. The wind, crooked that night, changing in gusts and then changing back, carried the sick-smell from Rattlebags to Walters.

‘Mr Rattlebags,' said the captain.

Oh, that bitter honourific. Each man on
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knew the boom fell when Walters mocked them with ‘Mr.'

‘Mr Rattlebags,' the captain said again, ‘be there some trouble with the course I set?'

Sighing, Rattlebags answered no.

‘Be there something wrong below to force you up here then, against my orders?'

‘Only this, sir: the charts lie askew. One of the rocks weighting a corner slipped. I advised the helmsman as you looked busy fore.'

‘I smell shit and lies,' said Captain Walters. ‘Will
you
now tell me how to sail my ship?'

None of us looked at Walters and Rattlebags, not directly. The captain's face-lumps flushed dark red, and he took a ragged breath. I did not want Rattlebags to be English oak, like Atthey. I wanted him to strike some sense into the old fool, but I knew he must take the blows. A shame it needed to be done before the men.

Rattlebags answered ‘No, sir.'

‘So get below.'

Rattlebags tried again to tell the captain we needed to change course, but Walters just repeated his order and then he called an order to empty rigging. Coltman had come aft, and he caught Rattlebags' eye. The boatswain at the helm, too, observed the silent exchange. And Rattlebags stumbled below, too shaky to walk right.

Walters ordered me to fetch gasket ropes from the boatswain's locker – oh aye, my favourite spot on board. Dark down there. Coltman heard Walters and darted below through the charthouse, taken with belly cramps, he said. Orders being orders, I made my descent, nearly gagging with dread of it. Some days I wished Coltman would just use me quick and honest, spare me the waiting, but that torment did be part of his game. I had great trouble picking up loose gaskets, because one day Coltman had hidden there, knowing I'd soon be along, and grabbed me, sounding like some great big crow. Only a bit of fun, he told everyone after, a bit of skylarking. I knew Captain Walters would get impatient, and as his step neared overhead I grabbed any old loose length and climbed the ladder. By then, Walters had knelt down and stuck his mess of a face into the locker hole, blocking out the light. I cried out and nearly lost hold of the ladder, and he called me twitchy thing. Said ‘I shouldn't need to chase after you so, Kit. I tell you, time and again: the devil don't stalk you, for your soul's too small.'