Easton (12 page)

The thunder rolls and crashes again. The ship sways and the rain continues to clatter.

George watches Jemma by the serving table, her back turned against them. Her movements are as graceful and considered as the weather is fierce.

“Nothing would give us greater pleasure, sir,” Whitbourne replies. “But there are alas impediments of honour, obligations which cannot be broken, however tempting and however noble the inducements.”

Whitbourne seems, to George, surprisingly composed. And Easton merely smiles in mild regret, as though accepting the answer.

Then he looks at George.

“And what of you, young sir?” he asks, taking him off guard. George has to pull his gaze away from Jemma again. “Is there nothing here to induce you to stay in my company? Nothing that overrides your duty to the cold northern outpost to which fate has so far bound you?”

Jemma moves like a noiseless shadow toward the table with a plate of meat; it’s the white flesh of a bird this time. George barely has time to form an answer before Whitbourne breaks in.

“Our young friend has the most profound of all obligations, one soon to be witnessed by God and the Church.” Whitbourne’s eyes flit briefly to Jemma as she lays the meat on the table. “Next spring he returns to England to marry into a noble Devonshire family, the Granthams.”

George shrinks into his chair and daren’t look at Jemma. He was foolish not to have considered this possibility. From the corner of his eye, he can detect no special reaction from her apart from an unnatural stillness.

“Indeed,” Easton replies with a courteous nod to George. “Then we must drink also to the happiness of such a desirable union!”

George coughs, tries to smile and fumbles for his goblet stem. Now, as he raises his glass, he does notice Jemma. She takes a step back from the table as though distracted, then returns and places the serving fork into the stack of meat as is the custom. She backs away from the dining table then, clutching her skirts with her fists, turns and strides quickly toward the serving hatch. She scrambles through and the door closes after her with a clunk.

Easton turns.

“Your servant appears to have left us,” Whitbourne says casually. He gives George an accusing look over the candles.

“I must apologize for her,” Easton replies with a shrug. “She has been acting as midwife for her sister. I have no proper doctor in my little fleet and now I fear the poor woman may not survive.”

George looks up, startled.

“A difficult birth?” asks Whitbourne, lowering some slices of meat with the fork onto his plate.

“Some of them have a hard time, especially when they are brought into warmer climes. This one has been mourning for home—perhaps you have heard her weeping—all through the pregnancy. It has been doing her spirits no end of harm.”

“And the father?” Whitbourne asks, flashing a stare at George.

“He is on one of my other ships. A competent enough sailor. But he will pay little heed if I were to bring him aboard the
Happy Adventure
. You see,” Easton takes another sip of wine. “These people have no concept or understanding of parenthood or marriage. Indeed,” he continues in a lower voice, “it is a well-known truth that many of the heathen in Africa eat their own young. It is said to give strength and potency to the men of a village.” Easton wipes him mouth with the kerchief and forks another piece of meat onto his plate. “You would be astounded at the barbarity of which they are capable.”

George stares at the table, feeling sick and oppressed. Easton rises and goes over to the serving table himself. He picks up a fresh wine jug and returns.

“You must forgive my servant her lapse and let me see to your needs myself,” he says, refilling George’s cup. As Easton moves around the table with the jug, George looks up and catches Whitbourne’s expression. It is smug and triumphant. George knows for certain it will be futile to try to persuade him Easton is lying.

The ocean grumbles and roars, answering the sky’s thunder. The cabin creaks, and a vague rolling sound comes from below, perhaps a cannon not properly secured. George cannot rest and knows he must act and act on his own; Whitbourne is no longer an ally. The pistol is still on the table, loaded. His sword and holster hang on the wall. The few possibilities flick through his mind like playing cards in mid-shuffle, none of them staying long enough to settle: kill Easton; wait until the ship is near land and escape; find an outpost of the British navy and tell them about Easton; escape with Jemma; escape with all of them—Jemma, her sister and the child; throw themselves on the mercy of whatever sun-scorched, treacherous shores they find.

All of these choices are terrifying. But he knows he must take one. If he tries to escape with Jemma and her forlorn little family, he cannot seek out the navy. Jemma and her sister would be mere chattel to them. In any case, there is no protection he could seek that would not cower from the sight of Easton’s fleet should he come after. Whitbourne capitulated. So did Pym. Why would any navy outpost in the tropics be more valiant or well armed?

But would Easton come after him? For some reason, as yet still obscure, the presence of the admiral and George is clearly important to him. What would Easton do if he caught him? He can almost feel the cold steel slice through his neck. He imagines his carcass strung up headless, bleeding, awaiting a clay oven or spit. He sees Whitbourne dining with good humour, supping wine and eating fresh meat with verve. He imagines Easton leaning across the table explaining that he had little choice but to kill the young captain, then asking Whitbourne how he is enjoying the young pig they managed to procure.

But it is no longer merely escape that George wants, even in the face of such danger. Whitbourne’s announcement at dinner and Jemma’s reaction has changed that. At the thought of Jemma, George’s body experiences a very different sensation from the fear of a moment ago—something warm and gushing, an oasis all the more sweet because of the fires of constant worry that surround it. Perhaps it is mere vanity to think himself the cause of Jemma’s grief at dinner. Perhaps she was merely worried about her sister and this is what carried her away from the table so suddenly.

But George hopes her sister was not the real reason she left. And obviously Whitbourne did not think so, otherwise he would not have looked over the candles at George with such accusation. Nor would he have chosen that moment, if he had thought her impervious, to break the news of George’s engagement.

George feels suddenly elated at the near-certainty of it. And at the same time the dark side of Whitbourne’s judgment forces itself into his mind. What if he is right? What if Jemma, graceful and honest though she seems, is actually the very soul of depravity, a demon incarnate? Might she not practice devilry and cannibalism, but have such wiles and subtlety that she is able to deflect her horrors onto Easton? Perhaps this is part of her magic.

A picture forces itself into his brain of Jemma tying Baxter’s hair to a nail on the wall while mumbling some heathen spell. He remembers how convincing she was when telling George that it is Easton and not her who performs such outrages. How devilish indeed if she were able to lie so well!

George sits very still now, allowing such thoughts to enter and play out their horrible permutations. He remembers Whitbourne’s words about how long he has spent away from the company of women, how vulnerable he is. He thinks of Whitbourne’s vastly greater experience. He has been to the tropics before while George has not. He must have encountered African slaves at close quarters before while George has not. He even relives the admiral’s announcement at dinner, the timing of it, designed to warn Jemma off as though George were a newborn lamb and Jemma an eagle circling for the kill. George is almost touched by the fatherly concern it implies.

George remains motionless, perched on the end of the bed, letting the thoughts race and spiral to their natural end. It is true that his belief in Jemma makes no sense. Whitbourne is right about that; his interest in the slave is unseemly enough and against his nature. The admiral’s warning is entirely logical. And he has often thought how he wanted to be like Whitbourne, a man of standing and respectability. He wanted a fleet of his own or a home commission with the Admiralty. He wanted to have a wife like Rosalind Grantham.

He can see the whole thing through Whitbourne’s eyes. His passion for the slave must surely seem some kind of madness, a fancy which will be swept away at the first sign of home. What if a British frigate were to rescue them? What then? Would Rosalind not come sharply back into focus? Would the image of the slave not disappear? Would he not laugh her off as one does a fantastic nightmare? “Last night I dreamt I was in love with an African slave,” he imagines himself saying to his friends in London in the public house close to his lodgings. “I dreamt I wanted to bring her home to England and marry her instead of my Rosalind.”

He can imagine the guffaws and mad banging of tankards upon the table. The whole affair would be neatly swept away like an overly-raucous joke, and all would be forgiven. “We all become a little unhinged on our first trips to the tropics,” he imagines Whitbourne saying to him while he puts a comforting hand across his shoulders. “I remember one time...” the admiral would then go on to relate something similar from his own experience.

And surely there was some kind of wisdom in Whitbourne’s concern. What had he said? “You are not the first...”? Had it happened to him too then? And if so, did he not know for certain that it would pass? The idea is somehow terrifying, that he might be balancing on a delusion like a high wire performer at the Southwark Fair.

A sickly sweat begins to drip down George’s neck at these thoughts. He knows them to be at least partly valid. He knows that Jemma would never fit into any aspect of the life he has known, that she would be the coarsest of jokes, the most clashing of incongruities. She would be a rusty nail in the finest of silks, a bawdy song in a church service. Yet his senses will not let her go. His attachment is rooted in the gentle-bold stare of her eyes; in the way she moves slowly yet precisely with her head to the side as she picks up a jug; in the way she challenges him with her indignation; in the way she calls him a fool to his face, yet seems almost tender as she does so. His senses are more real to him now than in a life which is floating further from him with every bob of the ship’s bow. His senses are the only things that, in potency, can match his fears. And of one thing he is certain. Easton is lying. He is lying about Baxter’s death. Why would he then not also be lying about the unhappy lieutenant’s dismemberment?

A resolve returns to George. He must act on these impulses because they are all he has. He is alone and virtually friendless upon a pirate ship. His superior has been hoodwinked. The pirate would certainly kill him without the least compunction if he were to displease. He has quite possibly been tricked into eating human flesh. And unless he can escape, more horrors are surely to follow.

George sinks down
to rest at last. Tonight he remains fully clothed. The ship continues rocking over waves at once shallow and rapid; it feels more like a fast-flowing river than the ocean. Lightning flashes in the porthole. Thunder grumbles somewhere far beyond it all.

George closes his eyes. He sees the blue glint of steel in the darkness—Easton’s sword flashing again and again. He feels the touch of its blade around his neck, circling both ways from his Adam’s apple. At first it’s no more than a nettle graze, but it deepens moment by moment, then finally oozes hot blood as he tries to stem the flow with his fingers.

He opens his eyes. No one is there. His neck is untouched. Blue lightning flashes from the porthole.

The cabin creaks and groans in the darkness. He turns to the side, moans and closes his eyes again. Minstrels play in a corner of a grand hall. George and Jemma dance to the lute and drum. Jemma is beautiful in court costume with her movements so graceful and precise. The two of them make an arch for a line of couples to dance through. George catches the glistening eyes of the men and women who parade, ducking, under their arch. There is something unnerving about the painted white faces of the ladies and the overconfident smiles of the gentlemen. As the last of the couples go through a rumble of applause starts to drown out the music. Applause turns into laughter which becomes tumultuous, like crashing waves. George turns and sees all the dancers crowding together. They are pointing at Jemma and himself, cackling and screeching with laughter. Men slap themselves on the knees. Women fan their faces, hiding yellowed teeth exposed by their hilarity. George recognizes no one fully, yet each has some of the features of a person in his life. One of the gentlemen, extravagantly robed and bejeweled, looks like Whitbourne. Another thin man could be mistaken for Easton were he a little stockier. His sister, Anne, is there too, taller and more adult than she had been when he left her in England last spring. She is also laughing at him; she leans under cover of her fan toward another mirthful lady who looks a little like Rosalind.

George turns to face Jemma again. Her expression is neither shocked nor embarrassed. Rather, there is a sadness in her moist eyes.

He turns at the braying, screeching group.

“Stop!” he calls out. “Stop! Stop laughing!”

But the laughter only gets louder, then starts to rumble like thunder. A gentlemen’s guffaw turns into a sudden crash. A moment later the ballroom is overtaken by a hailstorm, pellets scattering on the roof and against the windows. The dancers cower under fans and disperse shrieking into the corners like a flock of birds.

George opens his eyes. The thunder continues, as does the rain, which streaks over the porthole window and clatters on the cabin roof. He becomes aware of a change in the room, a tall shadow next to the bed that was not present before. He waits until his eyes adjust to the darkness, but the figure remains. Then it appears to move; the noise it makes is no more than the faintest rustle of clothes, but it’s enough to indicate it is human.