Blessed Isle Read online

  But looking away was another mistake. A couple had begun to dance to the music: she in a white blouse and no stays, her great full skirt billowing about her like a wheel, he in a pair of white breeches and nothing more. I cannot attempt to describe how lascivious was the sight. They swayed together, their hips moving in the rhythm of the drums. Came together, he pressed tight to her back, their bodies moving as one, then swirled apart, catching one another by the throat for a kiss, breaking away and dancing alone, flaunting themselves, taunting one another with their beauty and their pride.

  The breeches rode low on the man’s hips. Along the hollow of his flexing spine his sweat gleamed like amber, and his black skin bore a fine dew like the bloom on the skin of a plum. He drew himself up and clapped a staccato rhythm, making the music his own, making my heart drop and then soar. So beautiful! So masculine; so ready to lay claim to what he wanted. And she, so complicit, her eyes full of answering fire, challenge, and amusement.

  Garnet’s hand on my thigh was almost my undoing. I turned and saw on his face the same expression I had seen on hers: a yearning, inward, sensual look—a defiance and an invitation. He wanted me to be as proud as the dancer for him; to be a man, for him. “You can’t say you don’t want this as much as I do.”

  His hand moved, sliding up to curve about my yard. The blood drained from my skin and my lips became cold. Oh yes, I wanted him with an intensity that crossed the line into pain. I shoved back the bench on which we sat and reeled away, spilling hat and coat and wig to the floor, my teeth chattering. “It ca—it can’t happen!”

  “But why?” He pouted like a spoiled child, and I wished I didn’t find it so adorable.

  “You need to ask?” They’ll pillory us and pelt us with excrement. They’ll mock and laugh and whisper. They’ll take away the twenty years of my life I spent working for this: my rank, my ship, my duty, my king and country. My pride.

  Garnet drew himself up with a lithe and heartbreaking arrogance like that of the dancers. His unselfconscious smile was an anchor in a racing tide. “Am I not worth the gallows?”

  I cut myself loose, stumbling out into the crowd, and thence to the door, pursued by his gaze as by a shark. I feared he might yet eat me if I stayed longer. “I am not afraid to die,” I said. “But the man is not yet born who could tempt me to endure the possibility of disgrace.”

  By God, I’d forgotten what a prig Harry was in those days! Ungrateful bastard, and after I saved his sorry arse from making a laughingstock of himself in front of the Governor and the ton of Saint Sebastian. I will admit the whole incident somewhat dampened my ardour. Weeks of denial and anticipation, wondering where best to take him, savouring in advance the thought of our first time. How sweet, how intoxicating a thought . . . and now this.

  Though I picked his discarded garments from the floor before I too headed back to the ship, I made certain to drag them through every scrap of mud upon the path.

  Disgrace, eh? I grew up in disgrace. How could it be otherwise, being the youngest of five sons, with no other way to attract my parents’ attention? I have stood in the corner of the schoolroom very still for hours on end while my brothers and sisters played outside. I have been cuffed and birched and caned at home, and in the Navy I have been mastheaded, left spread-eagled in the rigging, and kissed the gunner’s daughter a thousand times.

  I like to be admired, but I don’t care very much, within, what people think of me. Not with the kind of soul-deep care that Harry seems to feel. I didn’t understand it then. I’m not certain I understand it now.

  I see he has called me “Pest” and admonished me to keep to the story. What shall I say about him then? Brute! Do you truly think you can still give me orders now?

  Still, it was in a sober frame of mind that I returned to my cabin. As was no doubt his intent, I pondered the rejection for some days. Weeks, indeed. Until my cot became a torment to me, sleep being far off, and I could have mapped the position of every knothole and nailhead in the deck above me blindfolded. How could I fight this bugbear of disgrace? Why should I trouble myself thus over some ape of a creature with whom I had scarce exchanged a dozen words? Who was this man to have such a hold on my imagination, with his coarse hands and his cowardice?

  No man of resolution would be turned back from his course by such an ephemeral threat as disgrace. Good God, no man of fashion would still be wearing a wig these days! I should have known from that alone that he had the dash and the moral precepts of my grandfather.

  And then I would dream of him, his hair grown long and soft. I would put my lips to it, and it would taste of bitter chocolate. I’d wake hungry, in every sense, and begin again the endless battle to hate him for his fear.

  This was an anxious and a fretful time for us all. We re-provisioned at Saint Antonio’s busy docks, caulked the seams of all the ships afresh, emptied and pumped out each hold to check for damage to the hull. We scraped the worst of the filth off Banshee’s copper bottom, and careened the other ships to rid them of weed and worm. Then we reloaded the ballast and stocked the holds carefully to ensure each ship sailed to the best of her ability. All this at the breakneck pace for which the Navy is justly praised. Time was drawing on. August passed into September, and though here the days might pass as balmy as ever, down at the arse-end of the world, where we were going, the change of seasons would be reflected in foul weather, uncertain winds and currents.

  Time and tide wait for no man, they say. Neither waited for us.

  We left Rio on the fourteenth of September, Banshee leading, Drake and Ardent a cable’s length behind, Cornwall and Quicksilver behind them in formation. It had been—the dart of Cupid apart—an uneventful voyage, and Angus Kent said as much as we sat down to dinner in the wardroom in the second dog watch.

  I told him to mind his mouth, and all around the table I caught the flutter of movement as lieutenants, marines, and warrant officers made little gestures to avert the bad luck. But I think I’ve said before that the gods frown on hubris, and we had scarcely hours to wait before this was proved true again. At six bells in the middle watch—I beg your pardon, dear reader. If you are no sailor, that is at three of the clock in the cold hours before dawn—the fresh wind that had carried us out of harbour veered. The sails fluttered at the edges with a sound like giant hands clapping. The fore course blew out aback.

  Tumbled out of my cot at the great crack, I raced up the companionway barefoot, in my nightshirt, and found Harry already there, already bellowing orders. Lieutenant Bailey, who was in my opinion the greatest idiot the Lord had ever gifted to this world, could not apologise enough. He smoothed his whipping grey-blond hair. The wind carried his ribbon away. His pale eyes bulged; the shift in the weather had taken him by surprise, he said. He would have had the sails under control in a moment. He was covered in shame that the Captain had been forced to wake, but really it was not his fault . . .

  A rain had driven in on the wind. It plastered my shirt against me and dripped into my mouth. I drew breath to tell him exactly what I thought of his seamanship, but Harry took hold of my arm, the heat of his hand like a spot of white light on my elbow.

  In the distance, but still too close, lightning tore a booming path across the sky, showing Harry’s eyes, vivid gold and then darkness. To think I was all but nude before him—the old linen shirt drenched and clinging—and I was too furious with Bailey to take advantage of it. I missed an opportunity there, and it was the last one I would have for many terrible weeks to come.

  But first I need a drink. I taste those days in the back of my throat and they cling there like mildew. I half expect to find a crop of hands and limbs and organs, all furred and soft with rot, growing deep inside my chest . . . But that’s—no. That’s just a nightmare I have at times. Wait a moment.

  There. It’s better to write this out of doors, under an awning in the marketplace, surrounded by women dressed in fabrics of such riotous colour it looks as though someone had smashed a stained glass window over t
hem. An escape route at my back, the ocean in front of me, placidly blue, and a glass of cachaça to hand. There’s nothing like that taste of grass and pepper and eye-watering alcohol to strip the stench of death from your mouth.

  The contrary winds remained with us. By tacking and tacking and tacking again we inched down southerly. Our intent was to round the Cape of Good Hope and then sail almost due east to Australia, yet we found ourselves constantly blown back towards the coast of South America. At first we attempted to uphold morale with endless rounds of ship visiting. Such officers as each transport could spare dined with us, and then the next day we would row over to them, and repeat the process in return.

  But mine seemed not to be the only bruised heart aboard, for the atmosphere of these visits was awkward at best, poisonous at worst. I suppose the grandeur of our wardroom in comparison to theirs left them feeling out of place and abashed. At any rate, as the journey wore on and our weariness increased, these visits fell off. We Banshees were left alone in our splendour, and our little fleet drew in on itself, surly and uncommunicative and tired.

  The Banshee herself was a cold, wet creature: At the best of times like a coffin buried in a marsh. Now, the planks of the hull separated as she worked against the wind. Cold sea water trickled endlessly down the walls. The decks, too, gaped as she wallowed, and rain and brine showered on all of us sleeping below. I would wake for my watches like a prune, my skin shrivelled by wet blankets. Salt sores opened on my back and legs and buttocks.

  And I was privileged, of course, for I had access to better rations than the men, and I did not have to pump, day in, day out, the rattle of it after a time as inaudible as one’s own breath.

  A month of this passed, and the sea chilled as we picked our way south. I slept in my coat now, my cot clattering against the wall without waking me from my sunken stupor. We were entering the treacherous Scotia Sea—the maelstrom of hot and cold currents and capricious winds that makes Cape Horn so feared.

  By this time we had hoped to be far, far east of this, with Africa to larboard, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and entering the Indian Ocean. But though we worked the sails until men fell from the rigging out of exhaustion alone, we could not make easting worth a damn. Though rounding Cape Horn—attempting to circumnavigate the world and come at Australia from the west—was foolhardy in such decrepit ships as formed our little fleet, it was beginning to seem like the only choice left.

  On the twelfth of October, Joe McCall fell from the foremast topsail yard and broke his back on the deck. He was our third victim of sheer weariness, and I remark it only because I thought for a moment he had made a boom like a cannon when he fell. I had joined the men hauling on the running rigging, and it was the boy Stirling who cried “Sir! Sir!” and drew my attention to the second gun and signal from the Drake. They were asking for Doctor Mortimer to be sent to them, and as they had a surgeon of their own, Harry sent me too, to see what was amiss.

  Dear God, it was dark. I remember that. The skies, though midday, were heavy as iron, smeared with a hint of rust. For once all winds had fallen, though a dirty emerald light flickered on the horizon. I could hear the silence as I swung up the side of the convict transport ship, and my skin crept. The smell hit me first. You’ve smelled slave ships, I trust? That reek of human fear and ordure and misery? If not, I encourage you to do so. It may change your mind on many things. One voyage, they say, and you may yet come away human, but sign on for a second and you will lose some part of your soul. This was worse. This did not give a man a second chance. It hit me in the face like the moist wind on the opening of a hothouse door, and I bent double and vomited over the side.

  “Not pretty, eh?” said Joseph Barnes, the Master, as I straightened up, holding my handkerchief to my mouth.

  “What . . .” I asked, looking out over a deserted deck, ropes lying in tangles, sails unmanned despite the livid sky, marines sleeping in the bow netting rather than go below. “What is the cause?”

  “Death.” Dr Mortimer came aboard with his servant behind him. “That is the smell of death, and . . .” He sniffed the air as a gourmand might sniff a fine bottle of wine, sifting through the various flavours. His jowls drooped, and he hugged his bag to his chest as though it were a sleeping child. “Typhus, I believe.” His smile looked winched up by thin lines. “The bouquet of Newgate.”

  “Gaol fever, he means.” Barnes was a starving bulldog, his skin hanging in folds, almost green in the eerie light. We followed him below, to a bare and silent mess deck. Hammocks, each sewn closed about a human form, were piled up in the stern. A speckled arm lolled from a cot still swinging from the deck above, and Mortimer picked it up with professional interest, looking pleased when its owner screamed.

  The smell filled every orifice, oozed almost visibly into one’s footsteps. Not like battle, that’s a bright smell, sulphur and hot brass and fresh meat, coppery and clean. This was foul.

  “Yes.” Mortimer dropped the arm and proceeded to the cage built into the bows. “Typhus.” No movement stirred behind the bars. Down in the hold where the less privileged had been confined, there was no sound. Only that fetor, sliding up the stairway like a snake.

  “A storm is coming,” I said, numb with the horror of it. There must have been lanterns, I expect. I believe Barnes had one in his hand. But I remember the scene pitch black, as though we stood in a pit. “How many men do you have to man the ship?”

  “Not enough.” Barnes drew in a wheezing suck of breath. “We was tired to start with. All this fucking tacking upwind, sir, we was fit for the knackers weeks ago. Then this started and we dropped like flies. Four of us left, sir, fit and healthy, counting the marines. Ten with the remaining prisoners, but they’re women.”

  I looked back at the pile of hammocks in the stern, the lowermost already seeping with putrefaction. The topmost was barely two feet in length, sewn carefully to the larger form beside it. Barnes caught me looking and dropped a hand onto its swathed head. Tenderly, so as not to wake it. “That ’un’s Martha, my daughter. And this ’un’s my wife.”

  “I will send over crew from the other ships. At once,” I said, looking away so that he might weep in peace. It would be a near thing, but I believed we had just time to transfer men enough to get her through the storm. Maybe time to heave that pile of corpses overboard first, if we rushed. A nine-day blow with them tumbling about the ship like grisly skittles did not bear thinking about.

  Disaster has a funny way of breaking upon you by fits and starts, too large for you to comprehend the entirety at once. Dr Mortimer set a hand in the small of my back. Which I resented, I must say. He was always one for these little liberties. He muttered, “Sir,” in that tone these people reserve for tragedy and large bills. “We arrived healthy at Rio. This must have come aboard there. Given the amount of socialization between ships in the first weeks out, I feel it incumbent upon me to say . . .”

  The first tiny wave of the oncoming storm lifted the sea around us. I could feel it passing beneath the keel, shivering up through the planks of the hull. A change coming. An omen. I did not lift the doctor by his lapels and shake him. I hope you’ll agree that was very restrained. “It’s in the other ships too?”

  “Undoubtedly, sir. And also our own.”

  McCall’s fatal tumble from the rigging had made my mind up. No matter our determination, we could not sail directly into the wind. We would have to dare the Horn. I would give the order to turn west the moment Garnet returned.

  Driving rain had begun to lash horizontally across the greasy grey swells of the building sea. Garnet’s body, as he scrambled aboard, made a hole in this wall of water. His lips were blue, and beneath his sable hat, his hair whipped forward, thrashing like black tentacles. The pupils of his eyes were wide and dark as if from opium smoke. “They’re dead,” he said. “They’re all dead.”

  “Get a grip, man!” I exclaimed, twisted within at his distress. But I needed him back, under control and at work, more than I needed to g
ive sympathy. “What the hell kind of a report is that?”

  As soon as I got the true story out of him, I roused our own invalids on deck. We fought our way to the limping hulks of the transports, grappling and pulling them close one by one. The poor remnants of the crew from Drake and Cornwall amounted to no more than ten exhausted men bent double against the strengthening wind, speechless and cadaverous and dappled with livid red spots. I would not abandon even the violent convicts, much less those whose crimes had been merely to be hungry and desperate, and so as the waves mounted I sent the marines to swarm across from one ship to the next, breaking open the barred doors and bringing every human creature who still drew breath into the Banshee.

  Lashed together with Quicksilver, we plummeted down the troughs of waves that had become mountainsides. The sky had met the sea, and we breathed water only a little less dense than the ocean. The tear and smack and boom of lightning raced towards us on clouds like boiling black tar.

  Banshee wailed like her namesake as the unmanned Quicksilver wrenched at her, turning her broadside into waves that smashed down upon her like rockslides. I grabbed the arm of the last convict, scraped him over the rail, dropped him on the deck and hacked at the cables holding the dead ship to our living one. They parted, and as I screamed orders to set Banshee running before the wind, I saw the three abandoned vessels of my little fleet heel over, the sea swamping aboard them. A wallow, a moment’s smoothness on the surface of that raging ocean, and they were gone.

  Happy the man who dies in the middle of a storm—who never reaches the safety and sanctuary of calm, who never has time to contemplate the ruin he has just suffered. For there was my career and my reputation gone in under a minute, and if I’d had time to think about it then, I might not have had courage for what was to come.