The Collected Short Fiction, page 37
Captain Beverly wiped Thomas the Bloody’s brain from the crate with a handkerchief, then folded it gingerly and placed it back into his pocket. Mr. Thierry held the smoking blunderbuss at his side.
“See that this gets on board,” said the Captain. “And smartly. I want to be gone before the jackals arrive.”
Outside, it had finally started to rain.
4: The Darling of the Abbatoir
Alone in the first mate’s quarters, which had been surrendered to him without a twitch of protest by the one-eyed Mr. Johns at his captain’s order, Martin Dunwood lay in the cot suspended crossways across the tiny room and tried to acclimate himself to the deep pitch and tumble of The Lady Celeste as it pushed its way across the cresting waves, on its way to the open sea. Somewhere above him rain drummed over the ship, and its crew worked the lines and the sails with the precision — or lack of it — one might expect from a congress of pirates. Martin did not care to speculate on their abilities; he felt sick enough already. Instead he entrusted his fate to God and focused his attentions on better things.
Alice.
The promise of Alice pulled him across the sea, from his meager home in St. Giles to the polluted stink of London, and then to Tortuga and this wicked man’s vessel; he resolved that he would let it pull him across the whole of the world before he would ever give up his search.
The light in the lantern guttered as the ship plummeted down a steep trough. Martin snuffed it out before it could spill and light the room on fire. The darkness which fell over him was oppressive, as though someone had thrown a weight over him. The sounds of the water smashing into the hull, and of the raw voices outside shouting to be heard over the storm, became impossible to ignore. It seemed as though the whole ship’s complement had suddenly crowded into his cabin and begun knocking things about.
So he thought of Alice.
He remembered the first time he ever laid eyes on her: she had been standing on a corner outside a grocer’s shop. Her fine clothes and her red hair were disheveled and there was a horror in her expression, her face as pale as a daylight moon. Blood matted the expensive materials of her dress, caked heavily near the lower hem and arrayed in a pattern of sprays and constellations further up her body, as though she had just waded through some dreadful carnage.
Martin, who had been sent to London on his father’s errand the previous day, stood transfixed. He didn’t know what catastrophe had befallen her but it seemed she needed immediate help. He waited for a carriage to pass before he stepped out into the muddy thoroughfare, but immediately came up short — an older gentleman stepped out of the grocer and joined her at the corner. He too was well-dressed, though his clothes were free of blood. He threw an overcoat around her shoulders and hailed a carriage. Within moments he bundled her into it, and with a flick of the driver’s wrist she was whisked away, leaving behind her an ordinary corner on an ordinary street. The drabness of the image seemed to reject the possibility that she had ever been there.
It was not until years later that he saw her again. By that time his father had accrued some money through real estate, and had graduated into more elevated social planes. They had been invited to a party thrown by a local banker, and as Martin lurked unhappily in a corner of the room, resenting the pomp and self-satisfaction of the people around him, he saw her again.
She was standing amidst a crowd of men, young and eager for her attention. She smiled at one of them as he gestured to illustrate some point, and Martin knew at once that none of the fools had a chance with her, that she was wearing them like jewelry. He pressed his way through the crowd until he joined her little retinue.
If she noticed him as he approached she did not show it. He stationed himself in her outer orbit and just watched her. She stood stone still, and although she was properly demure and maintained the comportment of a young lady of her station, she was set apart from everyone around her. She seemed carved from stone. She was acting.
At the first break in the conversation, he said, “Didn’t I see you once outside a small grocer’s in the East End? It would have been a long time ago.”
Her eyes settled on him. They were a pale blue. “I rather doubt it.”
“You would remember this,” he said. “You were covered in blood.”
She betrayed no reaction, but even in that she revealed herself. No shock, no disgust, no laughing dismay. Just a cool appraisal, and silence.
One of the young men turned on him, his blond hair pulled back harshly from his forehead in a bow. “I say, are you mad?”
“Possibly,” said Martin.
“It’s all right, Francis,” she said. “He’s right. I do remember that day. It was quite dreadful. A horse had come up lame and had to be shot. It was done right in front of me and I think it’s the worst thing I ever saw.”
“I don’t remember a dead horse,” Martin said.
“Perhaps you weren’t paying attention,” she said. “So much goes on right under our noses.”
Within minutes she had dismissed her pretty men and Martin found himself sitting some distance from the party, talking to this remarkable woman who seemed to fit amongst these people the same way a shark fits amongst a school of mackerel.
“Why did you say that to me?” she said. “What did you think would happen?”
“I had no idea. I wanted to find out.”
“Hardly the right environment for radical social experiments, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would say it’s precisely the right environment.”
She offered a half smile. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Martin Dunwood. My father owns the–”
“Are you some sort of anarchist, Martin Dunwood?”
“Would it make me more interesting if I said yes?”
In minutes they were in the banker’s bedroom, fucking with a furious, urgent silence. Thereafter they met often, and always clandestinely. She was even more contemptuous of the world than he, prone to stormy rages, and he got drunk off of that rage. It was wild and different and echoed his own sense of alienation from the world. Their illicit sex was as much an act of defiance as it was a hunger for each other. After a month of this she took him to his first Farm, and he saw what she did there.
It was when he watched the blood drip from the ends of her long red hair that he knew he was in love with her, and that he would break the world to keep her.
5: The Carrion Angels
There were four of them. They emerged from the lantern-smoked alleyways of the nameless port town, building themselves from shadows and burnt rags. Seven feet tall, their thin bodies wrapped in fluttering black cloth, they listed back and forth as they walked, their bones creaking like the rigging of ships. Their faces were open mouths drifting among the tattered ribbons and the gloom. Teeth glinted in the firelight like hard flint.
They stalked the narrow avenues of the town with measured deliberation, going unseen by most of the population, and sending those few that did see them shrieking and scattering like frightened gulls. Some of the more foolhardy among them turned and fired a few wild shots before running. The carrion angels were oblivious to all of it, their bodies accepting the violence they way a corpse accepts the worm. They swung their great heads toward each juncture of road and alley, lifting their snouts and huffing deep breaths as they tracked the scent.
They followed it to a darkened warehouse where they found the corpse of Thomas Thickett, the back of his head cratered and his brains splashed across the stacked crates and the packed earth. The stink of it made them drunk and they lost focus for a moment, hunched around this glorious fountain of scent, this unexpected confection. But they remembered their duty. Turning aside for the moment, they creaked slowly through the warehouse.
They knew almost immediately that the heads had been taken.
The trail resumed at the bay door, wending down toward the docks. But before they pursued it, they returned to the feast that had been left them. They surrounded the body of Thomas the Bloody and stooped to feed, lowering their heads into the bowl of his corpse. They ate with a grateful reverence, the sound of wet meat and cracking bone giving measure to an almost absolute darkness.
Outside, the town had erupted in a panic. Word of the carrion angels’ presence had spread fast and the narrow roads were choked with men fleeing for their ships. Pirates and sailors careened drunkenly, lurching, stumbling, trampling the fallen. Throughout the town panicked men shot and stabbed at shadows, and the road to the sea was marked by the bodies of the dead and the dying. Most of the women stayed inside, shuttering the windows and locking the doors; others, often the youngest and least experienced, followed the pirates to the docks, forgetting in the terror of the moment the temperament of these men, and remembering only when they were beaten back or shot as they tried to climb the gangplanks to safety.
The ships were alight with lanterns, riggings acrawl with sailors making ready for the sea. Boats were dropped from the sides and men were set to towing the vessels from the port. Gunsmoke hazed the air and the bloom of violence was a grace upon the town. They walked in their slow, swaying gait through it all, like four tall priests proceeding sedately through hell, confident in their faith.
The scent ended at the docks. The crate of heads had gone to sea.
It was a small thing to sneak passage aboard a ship. The carrion angels dissolved into rags and dust, blowing like so much garbage in the wind, carrying over the water and into the rat-thronged hold of one of the several pirate ships, settling amongst the refuse and lying as still as the dead.
The captain of this very ship, a hard old man called Bonny Andrew, who harbored a longstanding terror of these creatures yet misjudged their physical nature, waited until they had reached some distance from land and ordered his ship to turn about, offering its broadside to the town. At his command the ship fired its complement of guns in a poorly orchestrated yet devastating volley, sending cannonballs smashing through weak wooden walls and bringing whole buildings to the ground. Another ship took inspiration from this and fired as well.
Within moments the nameless port town and its luckless residents were reduced to broken wood, and smoke, and blood. The pirates, satisfied at their own efficiency, rounded out to sea, dark under a moonless night.
The carrion angels slept in the hold. The scent’s trail was a road, even over the sea. They were sure of their step.
6: Tea and Blood
Martin had only just achieved a precarious sleep when he was awakened by the harsh voice of a bent, pinch-faced man in his nightclothes. He stood in the narrow door and held a lantern at his side, casting his own face into garish shadow. “The captain wants you,” he said. “Sharp-like.”
He pulled himself unhappily out of bed and fetched his trousers from the floor, noting the slow, easy roll of the ship over the waves. He must have fallen asleep during the storm. Perhaps he would make a seaman of himself yet. Still, an unbroken sleep would have done him good.
“Who are you?” he asked brusquely, reaching for his jacket.
“I cook your meals for you, mister, so mind your tone. I also see to the captain’s whims. Which is you now, so be smart about it. Look at you fussing over your clothes like a proper lady. Leave off and do as you’re bid, before his mood turns.”
Captain Beverly’s mood was generous. His quarters were at the aft of the ship, and the windows were open, affording him a salty breeze and a king’s view. The clouds had dispersed, and although there was no moon to light the waves, the stars burned in great, glittering folds. Beverly sat with his back to it, a shadow against the sky. With his thick hair and his unkempt beard he looked like a figure from the Old Testament. The table had been set up between them, with a kettle of hot water and two mugs.
“Did I interrupt your sleep, Pretty?” said the captain.
Martin took the seat opposite. He heard the steward shut the door behind him. “I know this is your ship, and you’re lord of the high seas and all that, but I will thank you to call me by my proper name.”
“Ah. I see your sensibilities are as delicate as your tender little hands.” He leaned forward and pushed the mug closer to him. “Well perhaps some tea will soothe your English heart.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Martin poured the tea into the mug and held it under his nose, breathing it in. He sipped, and found it surprisingly good.
Captain Beverly smiled. “Privileges of the wicked life,” he said.
“I suspect the privileges are many. Including summoning gentlemen from sleep to sit at your table upon a whim. What need do you have of me, Captain?”
“I have need of your context, Mr. Dunwood. I would like to know your business with the Cannibal Priests.”
All the warmth generated by the hot tea was dissipated by the utterance of that phrase. He put the mug back on the table and concentrated carefully on maintaining composure. The captain, damn him, watched him as carefully as he would an opponent in a duel; if that’s what this was, the revelation of his knowledge of Martin’s business had already defeated him. The captain smiled; light glinted from his teeth.
“Mr. Gully has been indiscrete, I see,” Martin managed to say.
“Mr. Gully has the eager tongue of a dockside whore, but I don’t need him to tell me what’s already plain. I told you at port that your business could stay your own, but I’ve had something of an eventful night since that time, and I’m afraid I must now become a trifle more insistent.”
“How do you know of them?” said Martin.
“I do a bit of work for them, Mr. Dunwood. On the side, as it were. I am about their business even now.”
“But … I thought you said you weren’t going to New England.”
“I’m not. Now Mr. Dunwood, I’ll ask you again. And if you avoid my question one more time I shall summon Mr. Thierry into the room, and he will do the asking on my behalf. Do you understand me?”
Martin’s sense of control had evaporated. He was afraid; it was a new and unwelcome emotion. “Yes, Captain, I think I do,” he said quietly.
“What is your business with the Cannibal Priests?”
Martin took a breath to steady himself. “I’m going to barter for a seat at the table.”
Captain Beverly gave a slight shake of the head, scrutinizing him carefully. “This isn’t how it’s done, though. Sneaking north on a renegade ship, for God’s sake, like some plague-addled wharf rat. No. One is invited. One arrives in a gilded carriage. One is provided with servants to open doors and proffer chairs, and to wipe one’s powdered arse. Not like this. Not like you’re doing it.”
“Obviously, I have not been invited.”
“Obviously.” The captain smiled at him. They crested a wave and through the window Martin saw the sea fall away behind the captain’s head to be replaced by the long, open dark of the sky. The cups on the table slid a few inches before settling to a stop. “You’re crashing the party, aren’t you, you scamp. They don’t know you’re coming.”
Martin said nothing. Despite the cool air blowing in through the open window, the room felt close and hot. The pitching of the ship made a tumult in his gut; that, along with the new and very real possibility that this brute might interfere with his plan to see Alice again, made it a struggle not to spew his last meal all over the table between them.
“I can pay you,” he said. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
“‘Pay me.’ You’re paying me already. Will you do it twice? What is this new service you wish to compensate me for?”
“You say you work for them. I can pay you not to warn them of my approach.”
The captain sipped from his tea and seemed to consider for a moment. “You’re making certain assumptions. Let me ask you. What are your intentions, once you arrive? I do business with these men. Do you mean to disrupt it?”
“No. I do not threaten that relationship in any way. I’m only looking for someone. I want to bring her back to England with me.”
“I see. It’s a love story, then.”
“If you like.”
“All proper men of the sea enjoy a good love story, Mr. Dunwood. Despite the fact that ours always end in tears.” He leaned back in his chair again, the wood of the chair creaking beneath him. The stars heaved in the sky. Finally, he said, “All right then, Mr. Dunwood. Your story does not entirely set me at ease, but it does rouse my interest. We’ll go on as planned. You may return to your bunk.”
Martin made no move to rise. “And your work for them, Captain? What is its nature?”
Captain Beverly looked at him flatly. “I’ve shown you all the forbearance I intend to for the evening. Remember where you are.”
Martin nodded, and rose to his feet. His hand was on the door when Captain Beverly stopped him.
“A word of caution: it’s not my tongue you need worry about. That little villain you’ve hired to do your dirty work will sell you for a tuppence. You know that, surely?”
Martin stopped. “Fat Gully.”
“That’s the one. Off to bed now, my lovestruck friend. Lets see what tomorrow brings us, shall we?”
Martin retreated to his cramped quarters. He slept fitfully, and he was plagued by dreams of the Farm. He watched a cleaver rise and fall, over and over again, lifting bright red arcs into the air. He saw a stunned human face pressed against the bars of a metal cage. He heard a shriek so piercing that it launched him from sleep, upright in his swinging cot at some unknowable black hour of the night, panting and listening. He listened, but there was only the sound of the waves against the hull, the groan of wood straining against the deep. He closed his eyes again, and if he dreamed further, it was only of the abyss.
Index Of Stories
Note that 'The' and 'A/An' are ignored for alphabetical ordering purposes. Struck-through titles are not yet available in this collection.
A
The Atlas Of Hell
C
The Cannibal Priests Of New England
The Casual Conversation Of Angels
