Son of Fortune (25 page)

Aiden made a polite, formal bow. “Thank you for a lovely afternoon, Mrs. Brock,” he said. “I enjoyed our scientific pursuits.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Madison,” Alice said. “Goodbye.”

iden got back to the
Raven
just as Christopher and Fish and the crew were returning from the North Island. Everyone was tired and tipsy but in a good mood, even the sailors, for they had spent the day at their own party, with a generous supply of pisco and a whole roasted pig.

“Cricket—what an absurd game that is!” Christopher said as he sank with exaggerated weariness into a canvas deck chair. “You have no idea!”

“It's like baseball, isn't it?” Aiden replied.

“Well, yes, in the way that stale bread is like meat since they both are chewed and swallowed.” Christopher wrenched his boots off and put his feet up on a hatch. “A game of cricket goes on twice as long and makes half as much sense. It's boring as hell. It may
be
hell—at least the official sport of hell. If anything will ever cause me to repent my evil ways, it will be the thought of an eternity at a cricket match.”

“It wasn't exactly horse racing,” Fish agreed.

“It wasn't even snail racing!” Christopher sighed. “They just try to knock some little sticks off of other sticks and then run back and forth. Plus they spent a whole day yesterday flattening out the pitch—that's what they call the playing field—because the pitcher—who is called a bowler—God knows why—has to bounce the ball off the ground. But of course it isn't ground at all, but guano, a fact no one seemed to take into consideration when they were planning the whole thing. So hardly anyone wanted to touch the ball. Mostly, we just drank punch all day.”

Clearly, it had not been children's punch. Aiden was worried that Christopher was falling into the drinking habit of this place—which for most, with so little to do, was basically a daylong pursuit.

“So how was your day?” Christopher asked brightly. “You were after some old broken dishes?”

“Yes.” The day rushed through Aiden's mind: the scar-faced overseer with his red eyes and striped sweat, the forlorn Buddha, the dying rag pile man, lovely plain Alice waving from the rail, the sweet taste of sherry, the playroom joy of the pottery shards, the stab of Alice's loneliness, his own confused longings, the sadness of impending loss.

“It was fine,” he said. “Did you know they're leaving? Alice and Nicholas and Gilbert?”

“Yes. I'm surprised they lasted this long. Not exactly the place for such fine gentlemen. But they did serve us well! I told you friends on a Brockleton ship would be helpful.” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “We're getting out next week anyway—maybe sooner!”

“It's certain?” Fish looked suspicious.

“Not ink in the ledger yet, but I'm quite sure.” Christopher beamed his most triumphant smile. “This could put our whole trip just under four months! If we can do every trip in four months instead of six, that is one more cargo every year!”

“Cargo?” Aiden stared at him in shock. “You mean guano?”

“Of course guano! We can't carry anything else in a guano ship—you know that. The smell never goes away.”

“We are not coming back to this place!” Aiden said.

“Of course not! God no!” Christopher flicked his hands dismissively toward the island. “This was just for the adventure. But we've had it now—adventure and experience and all that—so after this we'll just send the ship with Fish. You and I stay in the comfort of home and manage our empire!”

Fish frowned. This was the first he had heard of this scenario. Aiden could see that Christopher was not only drunk but also in one of his euphoric moods, so there was little chance of any reasonable conversation.

“Excuse me. I must see to the ship.” Fish was starting to look more like his serious older brother, Aiden thought. The weight of a captain's responsibility and the dreariness of life here were heavy upon him.

Christopher yawned and smacked dust out of his hair. “I will wash and sleep,” he announced to himself. “There are no parties tonight—well, no important ones anyway. God, what a ridiculous sport,” he muttered as he got up and weaved unsteadily toward the wash barrel.

Aiden sat on deck and watched the last traces of sunlight vanish from the far snowy peaks. The first stars appeared, and then the Andes began to fade away into darkness. How in the world had he ever come to be in this place?

He considered writing a letter to Elizabeth. But whatever would he say? He thought about her sometimes, pictured sitting with her in the garden, but truth be told, it was the cool green garden that enticed him right now as much as her memory. Was that bad of him? He liked Elizabeth very much, and she had certainly smacked him hard when they first met, but he did not ache for her now. Had she been standing by the rail that afternoon instead of plain Alice, on a wreath of roses like Mary on a holy card, Aiden wasn't sure he would have been any more excited. Alice was older and plainer and treated him with nothing more than sisterly affection. And she was married. He enjoyed being with her. He was always excited to see her. But he never wanted to touch her hair or kiss her. He always wanted to kiss Elizabeth, but now that he was away from her, he did not find himself longing for her. He missed her, of course, but the feelings he had had when he first met her seemed to have evaporated over the months of familiarity. Life never made sense, and even less when you added in women.

But at least the pieces of a broken bowl could be sorted out, he thought. He picked up his bag and tipped out a little pile of broken pieces on the hatch cover. The cat roused herself from the coiled rope where she liked to sleep, stretched lazily, strode over and began to sniff at the pieces. Aiden petted her silky coat and she purred.

“What's all that?” Fish asked as he walked by.

“Just some bits of a broken bowl,” Aiden said. “A coolie gave me lots of broken bits—mostly old, but these pieces were mixed in. They're modern. There are words scratched in.” He offered a piece to Fish, who examined it closely.

“I imagine all sorts of rubbish from the ships winds up with the coolies,” Fish said. “Probably a sailor scratched his name in his dinner plate.”

“Probably,” Aiden agreed. “How is our ship? All well?”

“The hull is grassy from these idle days. And the men are eager to be off.”

“Did you tell them about leaving soon?”

“Not until I know that it's more than Christopher's fancy. Though I do hope it's true.” Fish rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at the stars. “I won't do another trip,” he said. “I must tell you up front.…”

“I never expected you would. What will you do? Go back to lumber?”

“Up and down the coast on my brother's ship—ah!”

“You've got blue-water experience now,” Aiden said. “You could be a captain for anyone. Or at least a first mate. We would certainly give you a high recommendation. Which might actually mean something coming from Christopher anyway.”

“How do you stand him sometimes?” Fish said. “If you weren't partners, if you didn't have to be in his company, would you still be his friend?”

“I'm not sure Christopher has friends,” Aiden said. “He has more like collections of people. Like a little girl has dolls—only we can move our arms and legs on our own. But yes, I do honestly like him. When he isn't being infuriating or stupid or horrible or drunk.”

“When is that?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you trust him?”

“In a way.”

“You either trust someone or you don't,” Fish said.

“I trust him to be how he is.”

“Like you trust the shark will bite when there is blood in the water?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Fish laughed and went off to complete his inspection. The cat leaped onto the hatch, sniffed around the curious bits of pottery, then settled herself in Aiden's lap. Aiden nudged a dangling paw out of his way and began to piece the puzzle together. Without all the other ancient shards to distract him, it was pretty easy, and within minutes he had most of it assembled. But now the words were really puzzling.

Help. Kidnapped. Father pay riches. Jian Zhang.

What in the world was this? Jian Zhang—was that the name of the coolie who had given him the shards? But how did a coolie know how to write in English? That coolie only spoke a few words. The kidnapped son of a rich family? Here on the guano islands of Peru? That was absurd. Kidnappers anywhere in the world wanted ransom money. Aiden suspected there were many levels of people profiting from the procurement of coolies for this place—from the agents in China to those who arranged their transportation here. If the son of a rich man had somehow been snared up by accident or trickery in China, he should have been able to pay his way out long before he wound up here.

It had to be a joke. And if it wasn't a joke, well, what was Aiden supposed to do? He looked around for Fish, but he was up in the bow. Just then the cat tensed and her yellow eyes went giant with fear. Her fur bristled the way it did before a storm and she gave a weird yowl. The broken pottery pieces began to tremble. Aiden felt the deck vibrate. Then the world fell out from beneath him. The ship lurched sideways and the deck pitched up. Aiden's chair toppled and the pottery pieces skittered all over the deck. The cat dug her claws deep into the flesh of his leg. Aiden looked out toward the sea, thinking a ship had come loose and crashed into them, but he saw nothing. The sea was gone. Fish came running, almost sliding across the steeply pitched deck.

“What's wrong?”

“I don't know!” Fish said.

Suddenly there was a terrible quiet—as if all regular sound had been sucked out of the world. Then the ocean roared and the
Raven
was thrown up into the sky. Aiden fell backward, slid across the deck and crashed into the rail. Coiled ropes unwound and snaked through the air. Aiden tried to get his feet under him, but the deck was heaving so much it was like trying to stand in a racing wagon. He saw only shadows of men in the twilight as they came running, tumbling and grasping at the shrouds. All the stars on the horizon lurched up, like bread crumbs tossed off a picnic blanket.