The Prize, page 9
“A pleasure doing business with you, Captain Mallett,” he said. “There was one other matter I wanted to discuss with you before I take my leave, though.”
Mallett nodded, “I expected you might be asking, General. My answer is the same as it was the last time.”
“If you could see how poor these soldiers are at even the most elementary of tasks on a sailing vessel, Captain!”
“I do what I am willing … and able … to do here at my tavern, General. Beyond that … I have my obligations, sir.”
Draining his mug and setting it on the table, Arnold pursed his lips, disappointed. “I cannot fault you, sir, and yet I cannot help but think of how much your experience would help our effort.” He stood, and Mallett and Caleb rose as well. “In any event, I do appreciate the cider, and I wish you the best as this contest continues.”
“I pray that God gives to you safety and victory, General,” Mallett replied.
“Thank you, sir,” said Arnold, gravely. Gathering up his men with a motion of his eyes, he put his hat back on and left the tavern.
As the door closed behind the last of them, Mallett relaxed visibly, picking up the bill of sale. “I will never see any money from his quartermaster, of course. He is a very stubborn man, that General Arnold. But I long ago swore to never again raise a weapon unless in defense of myself or my family.” He looked at Caleb steadily, and said quietly, “I did not want to make any more widows … or orphans … at my hands.”
The conversation between Captain Mallett and General Arnold haunted Caleb for days afterward, and he finally broke down as they were fitting the last ribs into the second canoe and asked, “Captain, what service did General Arnold seek from you?”
Mallett stepped away from the canoe, stretching and rubbing the small of his back as he formulated a reply. “He is writing to me a letter some time ago, before even he left for his voyage through Maine to Quebec City. He promised me the rank of colonel if I would but come and train his boys in the ways of the ships and of the water.” He shrugged. “What would I be doing with a colonel’s insignia? And the training, that would be only the start. ‘Colonel Mallett, could you, please take command just of this little ship?’ ‘Colonel Mallett, how would you suggest that we are taking this fort?’ ‘Colonel Mallett, fire your cannon!’”
He closed his eyes and shook his head violently as if to dispel a crowd of ghosts close about him. “No, I want no part in that. I have seen my share, I have buried too many, I have with these hands murdered more than I can count.” Looking Caleb in the eye, he said, “I can agree with your Declaration of Independence without reservation when they say that men are willing to suffer, so long as evils are sufferable. I am one such man.”
“What murders have you committed? On several points, you have said that you killed men, yet you have not elaborated.”
“I have chosen carefully what not to say, my young friend. It is a long story, lad, and not I nor you would be happier for me telling it.”
Caleb’s eyes flashed and he retorted, “I should think that I ought to know the history of my child’s grandfather!”
Mallett froze where he was for a moment, narrowed eyes studying Caleb’s face. Very quietly, he said, “Is there something you need to be telling me, Caleb?”
“What? You mean … No! Good God, man, I have not so much as even kissed your daughter, much less got her with child!” Caleb felt the familiar warmth in the tips of his ears, but he ignored it. “If I am to eventually marry Lunette, however, should I know aught of her lineage?”
His shoulders relaxing imperceptibly, Mallett rubbed the side of his face with one hand and regarded Caleb. “If you will insist upon knowing, I won’t deny you, then,” he said, eventually. “Here … help me to set this last rib into place, and then we will go to the tavern, where we can speak together without the distraction of the work here, yes?”
Caleb nodded, his heart skipping a bit, both in reaction to his boldness in pressing the question, and in anticipation of the answers to come. Mallett noticed the younger man’s hand trembling slightly as he fitted the rib under the gunwale and gave him a knowing smile. “Already you are perhaps regretting yourself a little? Well, it is too late for your regrets … you will be hearing the story now.”
Grunting and straining, Mallett forced the other side of the rib under the opposite gunwale and then bore down on the strong cords that bound the birch bark skin to the gunwale. As he tightened the looped cord of stripped spruce root around the gunwale, the skin of the canoe tightened against the new rib until it was nearly as taut as the head of a drum. Tying it off as Caleb held the vessel steady against his tugging and leverage, Mallett stepped back and nodded, satisfied.
“There are but four more ribs to add, and then the gumming, and you shall have your own birch bark canoe,” he said. Caleb groaned inwardly. Gumming the seams on Mallett’s canoe had quickly displaced picking stone during mud season as his least favorite chore. There was no doubt in his mind that it was worth the effort, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.
Captain Mallett interrupted his ruminations, saying, “Let us be off to find a quiet table, then, Caleb.” Caleb nodded, running a hand over the emerging graceful form of the canoe as he followed Mallett toward the tavern.
As they sat at a small table in the corner of the dark tavern, Mallett beckoned Lunette from where she stood in the back of the room. She walked lightly over, smiling at Caleb as she approached. Her father spoke to her quickly in French, and she nodded quickly, heading back to fetch two cups and a bottle. “See to it that there is nobody disturbing us, ma chérie,” he said to her. “We have serious matters to discuss, Caleb and I.”
“Yes, Papa,” she replied. “‘Tis a quiet afternoon in any case.”
Once she was out of earshot, Mallett began, “Twenty and nine years ago, Caleb, when I was not much older than you are today, I shipped out as a mate aboard the French privateer Le Redoubtable, ‘The Frightening.’ Her captain, a man named Tremault, he was a terror, one who truly loved the blood and the sense of power one gets when the quarry is grappled and the swords are drawn, and the smell of death is in the air.”
He uncorked the bottle and poured himself a healthy slug. Gulping it down, he shuddered in reaction to the liquor and poured a slug for Caleb. “Here, take this, you will be needing it, I will expect.”
Caleb picked up the cup and sipped at it. He gasped as his mouth and throat burned from the rough drink. Mallett grinned at him and nodded in agreement with Caleb’s unconscious assessment. “It is better, still, than what I drank during my years on the sea. You will survive.”
“We sailed from France to go to the Caribbean sea … this is to the south of the mainland of the American continent, like so, yes?” He motioned with his hands, indicating the bulk of the continent with one hand and gesturing below it with the other. “During this time, there is much privateering commissioned by the kings in Europe against one another in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Kings in their courts with their intrigues and games while men such as myself scurry about and do their bidding.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes a bit. “We are thinking that it is all such an adventure, so much chance for money and fame … when I was your age, Caleb, I was not so smart as you. “ Mallett took another gulp of his drink and made a sour face. “Already I am not tasting it so much. “
“Anyway, such a one as this man, Captain Tremault, do not often keep their commands very long. They think only of their share in the prize, and this thought is easy for the crew to absorb. Death is patient for some of us, but for others, he seems eager to make their acquaintance. So it was for Captain Tremault. First, before we can even finish the crossing to the Caribbean, we come upon a small merchant ship, and his hand is carried away by a cannonball. This same cannonball killed the boy who stood beside me. With a tourniquet, Captain Tremault put off his meeting with Death that day, and we used bucket after bucket of seawater to clean the deck of his blood and the intestines of my crewmate after the other ship was taken.”
He poured another drink and sent it after the first.
“Then came the day on which he was reunited with his hand. They are together in hell, I am not doubting. Two Dutchmen, they tried to climb the side of the ship while we were at anchor early in the morning off a little island with no name, out in the Atlantic.” Mallett breathed sharply in through his nose, punctuating his next comment. “Captain Tremault met them, sword in hand, and they shot him between the eyes. After the rest of us had killed the Dutchmen, we had to wash the Captain’s brains and one of his eyeballs”—he laid a finger alongside one of his own eyes and flicked it forward by way of illustration—”over the side, along with the blood of three men.” He shook his head and filled his cup again.
“The rest of the mess, we wrapped in a shroud and put at the bottom of the ocean. The first mate, he is insisting that we continue to call him Lieutenant. We sailed for Bermuda … this is an island that lies out in the Atlantic off of the Virginia Colony, a little piece of paradise, despite the British who control it. There he resigned his commission, left the ship and married a girl—what is the word they use in English down there? … mulatto, yes? The next time I see him, he has a good plantation and five children, so how can I say he did the wrong thing?”
He sighed. “We sailed for the coast of Florida, this is here”—he motioned again with his hands to indicate where the colony lay “—with our new captain after that, Captain Gusteau. He was known for just one thing … he never took prisoners. All went to the sword when he took a ship, and for a time, we were the terror of the Bahamas, but I saw things of which I never want to speak, and which I do not think of unless I must.” He drained and refilled his cup again, a haunted look in his eyes.
“Aside from this, well, Captain Gusteau was the best seaman I have ever seen. In the end, it did him no good, however. He was only four months into his command, and we emerged from a little rainstorm where it was raining so hard you cannot breathe, it feels like. We found ourselves not a quarter-mile distant from an English frigate of twenty and four guns.” He shrugged.
“Captain Gusteau surrendered, of course. We could not fly and to fight would have meant certain death. He asked the English to treat us as prisoners of war, but they laughed at him in the face and we all went into chains, so that we could be fitted for nooses. We sailed for Grand Bahama, and the capital. The prize court there said that we were actually prisoners of war, and then there was a peace treaty, and so we were all freed there. The English, though, they kept our ship, of course.”
“So there I stood, I am speaking no English, I have no ship, and there is no money, of course.” He shrugged again. “I found a merchant ship with a cook who spoke a little French, and I signed on with them. We were at sea for about seven hours when the pirate ship La Trieste, under Captain Beauchamin, took us and I was able to speak with him and convince him that I was truly a Frenchman and a privateer myself.”
Mallett grinned and took another swallow from his cup. “Drink, drink!” he said to Caleb, who absently took a quick gulp from his, to his immediate regret. Mallett clapped him on the back until he stopped choking, and then continued.
“Those were some very good years, after that. With the war over, and waiting for the next, Beauchamin sailed just as a pirate for a time, no letters of marque and reprisal, just taking what shipping he could find. This meant, of course, that every ship we took needed a crew, and I worked the rigging and decks of any number of ships. And, it was not so very long before I had a ship of my own. Nothing much, just a waddling little merchant brig, but she was my first and only command.” He grinned at Caleb. “I named her La Lunette, so, now you see, my daughter, she is named after a pirate ship.”
Laughing at the younger man’s discomfiture, he continued, “Worry not yourself, lad, she is no pirate, that daughter of mine. She does not like to be reminded of what I was before I was a tavern owner, so mind that you do not speak of this with her, unless you have decided that you would like to be yelled at for some time.”
He drained his cup and continued, “There is not so much more to tell. After I had commanded La Lunette for a bit more than a year, we were taken by a French corsair sent to stop the piracy around the Bahamas and Bermuda. It was only through the intercession of Lunette’s mother that I did not dance upon the gallows.” He closed his eyes, a pained look in contrast with the gentle smile he wore as he recalled this chapter of his past.
“She was on the last prize we took before the French took us, and I was keeping her in a cabin to ransom her. The men, they wished to have some entertainment of her, but I would not let them. At first, I told myself that it was because she would be ransomed for more if she were not molested … but later, I knew it was because I had fallen in love with her the very first time I put my eyes on her.”
He sighed. “Ah, she was a beauty, my Daphne. When we returned to France, her father said but a word in the magistrate’s ear, and I was a free man, but her slave forever. She made me swear to her that I would never kill again, save in her defense, and I did this gladly. We sailed aboard a merchant ship to Bermuda, where I recovered certain things that I had put aside in case of a day such as this. Then we came here, I built Daphne this house, and the tavern for myself, and then Lunette was born.”
His eyes shone with unshed tears. “Now it has been five years since Daphne was taken from me, and Lunette is what I have left in this world. If her lineage is not unworthy, then, perhaps I will have grandchildren before I sleep beside Daphne?”
Caleb had been unable to do anything but listen raptly as Captain Mallett had shared his history. He blinked rapidly, and then said, “With your permission, Captain …” Raising his voice, he called out, “Lunette! Would you join us for a moment?”
She bustled over, a curious expression on her face.
“Lunette, if you are willing, I should like to publish the banns this next Sunday, and be married as soon after as it can be arranged.”
The blood roared in his ears as she seized his head in her hands and kissed him so hard his lips were bruised for the next three days. “Yes! Yes, Caleb! I was beginning to think that I should be forced to ask you, you sweet fool!”
Blinking back tears, Captain Mallett called out to the others in the tavern, “A toast! My little girl is to be married!” A roar of approval sounded from the small crowd, and Caleb and Lunette were toasted all around. By the time he slipped outside with her to take his leave, the sun was already slanting across the mountains. Standing in the scarlet light of sunset, he took her hands and they shared a gentler kiss and smiled at each other.
“You didn’t have to try to murder me, you know,” she murmured. “A mere bump on the head or some thing of that like would have sufficed.” They laughed together, and embraced before he reluctantly started home.
Walking into the cabin on the family farmstead, Caleb was practically floating on air, so preoccupied was he with the newfound joy in his heart.
“Good evening to you,” he greeted his mother, a dreamy smile still plastered on his face, sitting down at the table. “Where is Da?”
“He is out milking the cows, since someone failed to appear as expected and perform his chores as anticipated,” said Polly, sourly. Caleb realized that his manner had probably betrayed at least part of the reason for his tardiness, and though his father had been able to obtain her acceptance of his association with Captain Mallett, it had never been anything but grudging.
“Oh, Ma, I am sincerely sorry. I’ll go help.” With that, he leaped up and practically ran out toward the barn. Elijah was already coming back in, laden with the filled milk pails.
“We were starting to wonder if we ought be worried about you, Caleb.”
“I apologize, Da,” Caleb said, striding forward and taking one of the pails from his father. “I’ve news of the day of some import, though, which I would share with both you and Ma once we’re inside.”
Elijah’s eyebrows rose, but he made no comment.
When they had put the pails down to separate, Caleb beckoned his parents to sit across from him at the table. His eyes shining with excitement, he blurted out, “I asked Lunette to marry, and she accepted! Captain Mallett approves of our union, and I hope that I may depend upon your blessings as well?”
Polly’s hand tightly clutched her husband’s on the table, and her face was pale, but she said nothing when he turned to look at her in the sort of silent conference Caleb had watched them conduct many times during his childhood, usually when he had done something particularly foolhardy or destructive.
Slowly, Elijah nodded. “Lunette is a fine girl, and her father is a good man.” He looked pointedly at Polly. “You could do far worse, and I think little better than to marry her. You have our blessing.”
Caleb could tell from Polly’s expression that this decision on Elijah’s part was going to cost his father some urgent whispering far into the night, but he simply said, “I deeply appreciate it. Lunette and I had thought to publish the banns this Sunday, and to marry as soon as it is convenient for our families.”
Polly spoke up now. “What ceremony will you observe? Will Captain Mallett—” she still made his name sound like at least a medium-strength curse word “—accept a simple Congregationalist exchange of vows, or will he insist on the flourishes of a Papist showpiece?”
Caleb, who had not expected this line of questioning at all, stammered, “Er, well, we hadn’t really discussed—”
“Polly,” said Elijah to her, in a quiet but firm voice that promised to brook no argument, “Those are details which may be determined later. I have little doubt that we can reach an understanding with Captain Mallett as to a ceremony which will celebrate their union, without having to hold a second English Civil War here in our little village.”
