Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key Read online

  He was choking under water in the scuppers. He rolled over into air, peering up the deck which sloped above him steep as a mountainside. He began to scale it, hand over hand, past other soaked and struggling men. A wave the size of a house came over them, scouring down the deck. John caught hold of the edge of the companionway and held on. When he came up for air and drank in breath, he found himself staring into Mrs. Waverly’s gray eyes. Her face was white, her hair down around her shoulders, streaming like amber seaweed.

  “I will not die in there,” she said, inaudibly but John read her lips. She looked beyond him and John turned to see what she was staring at.

  Sejanus and the mulatto were working at the ship’s boat, unlashing it from its cradle. No one was attempting to stop them, or help them; every man left on deck was making his slow determined way hand over hand to the companionway, shoving past Mrs. Waverly as they flopped inside.

  “Anslow!” roared John, as Anslow slid past him. “The boat!”

  Anslow shook his head, with a sick grin. “The rum,” he said, and vanished below, to get as drunk as he might before the sea got him. Mrs. Waverly screamed and John half-rolled to see another wave coming at the Harmony, charging at her bows, spume high as a cathedral, a white cliff looming. It took forever to break, but when it did it lifted the bow of the Harmony, tilting her on her beam-end before dropping her with a crash as it flooded over the deck. Sejanus, the mulatto and the boat all vanished in a confusion of shattered water and noise; John looked up and saw the prow of the boat coming at him. He grabbed it and shoved it away. The water receded and the Harmony settled again with a grinding lurch. The boat lay in the scuppers with Sejanus rolling in it. He looked stunned, struggled feebly.

  Mrs. Waverly pushed herself from the companionway and slid down the deck to the boat. John let go and slid after her. He could hear planks splitting now, and a crack as the fore topmast broke and came crashing down, trailing all its rope and blocks. Mrs. Waverly scrambled nimbly over the gunwale into the boat and John hauled himself in after her. He lay there exhausted a moment, looking at her wet bare legs. She screamed again but the wave broke before he could raise his head to see it, a ton of white water smothering and blinding him, and he felt the boat pitch as the wave sluiced it clean off the deck and into the sea.

  The motion changed at once. John opened his eyes and found the boat swamped and wallowing. Mrs. Waverly and Sejanus had risen to their knees and were baling with their cupped hands. John followed their example, there under the high black shadow of the Harmony. The oars had gone; he saw one floating away, nearly close enough to reach but not without pitching himself out of the boat. A bucket did go bobbing by and Sejanus was able to grab it, and resumed baling.

  Another sharp crack, and a rending noise. John glanced over his shoulder and saw the Harmony’s mainmast going over, falling toward them. It seemed to be shrieking as it came. John spotted Mr. Tudeley, clinging until the impact of the fall shook him loose like an insect. He dropped into the water and sank. A moment later his bellarmine jug, and then his head, broke the surface and he was yowling and spitting, flailing in the water. John and Sejanus put out their hands and hauled him into the boat. He sat huddled on a thwart, shivering, glaring at them.

  A sudden beam of flaming light shone all around. The falling rain looked like drops of fire. They in the boat raised their heads, bewildered, and saw the red band of light at the far horizon, where the sun was setting in blood. It illuminated the wreck of the Harmony, on whose vertical deck not a man could be seen: her trailing tattered sails, her snapped yards and cordage all hanging down abandoned. She rolled like a dying animal, groaning. Her bowsprit stabbed into the wet air.

  The boat bobbed aimlessly a moment and then began to move away from her, as a current took it. They were pulled around, circling the rock, and away. The sun winked out and for a little while there was a glow that marked where it had been, like a bed of coals. Then it was dark, unrelieved by any star. They were adrift on the wide night ocean, ascending mountains and descending valleys of sullen black water.

  TEN:

  A Bawdy Catch

  FOR A WHILE THEY took turns baling, until the rain stopped at last. John’s hearing returned by degrees, as the ringing faded from his ears. They rode the surge up and down.

  “Have we any rum?” said Mr. Tudeley at last.

  “No,” said Sejanus.

  “What about food or water?”

  “No.”

  There was a lengthy silence, and at last Mr. Tudeley said: “I have read, in some books, that savages in the tropics will leap from their canoes into the water, when they spy a great fish swimming thereunder, and stab it with their knives and wrestle it back into the canoe. Would you perhaps give that a try, sir?”

  “I was born in Massachusetts,” said Sejanus wearily. “I can dig for clams. If I have a clam rake.”

  “Oh. I see.” Mr. Tudeley sounded petulant. “Well. Perhaps it won’t be necessary. Perhaps we’re near land. I descried land off to the west, at least I think it was the west, shortly before we wrecked. Had anyone listened to me and steered for it, I daresay we might now be at a secure anchorage in some pleasant harbor. May I say, Mr. James, that you owe me an apology for your contemptuous dismissal of my suggestion?”

  “Oh, shut your mouth,” said John. He couldn’t make out the change in Mr. Tudeley’s features, in the dark, but he felt the lurch as Mr. Tudeley sprang to his feet.

  “Damn you, sir! I shan’t be spoken to in that manner, do you hear me?” Mr. Tudeley screamed, and sprang forward with his fists raised. “Not by you nor any other grinning ruffian, ever again!”

  Perhaps he meant to fling himself on John. John thrust out his open hand, with rather more force than he had meant to use, and caught Mr. Tudeley square in the chest. Mr. Tudeley teetered back and stepped with both feet on the gunwale of the boat. There he danced a long second, his arms windmilling frantically as he tried to regain his balance while the boat tilted dangerously to that side. Both John and Sejanus threw themselves forward to grab him, and collided. Their combined weight was enough to capsize the boat. John heard Mrs. Waverly say a word he hadn’t thought ladies knew, before he went under the dark water.

  * * *

  He broke the surface with a harsh gasp and looked about frantically for the boat. It glimmered faintly a little way off, keel upmost, and if it hadn’t been painted white he’d have missed it. He swam for his life and caught hold, dragging himself up its side just as a pair of white arms appeared from the other side, clawing and grasping. He nearly yelled in horror, thinking it was a sea-phantom; but it was only Mrs. Waverly. She caught hold of his hands.

  “Where are the others?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” said John.

  “Here I am,” said Sejanus out of the near darkness, and after a moment’s splashing he found them and grabbed hold of the keel. “Did we lose Winty?”

  “Good riddance,” growled John.

  “Damn your eyes, you whoreson dog,” said Mr. Tudeley, who had swum up beside him.

  “Mr. Tudeley!” said Mrs. Waverly.

  “If you please, Winty,” said Sejanus, with his white teeth flashing in the darkness, “Remember there is a lady present.”

  “Oh, sod off,” said Mr. Tudeley. “My apologies, ma’am, I’m sure.”

  They tried to right the boat, four or five times, without success; exhausted as they were, at last they desisted and merely pulled themselves as far up the boat’s hull as they could manage, and clung on to the keel. Presently Mr. Tudeley said he couldn’t feel his hands anymore.

  “I can see them,” he said, “But it’s as though they belonged to someone else. They’re starting to slip. I shan’t be able to hold fast much longer, and I don’t believe I’ll be able to lift my arms to swim, if it comes to that. I’ll drop straight to the bottom, like a lead plumb bob. Unless that a shark—”

  “You stop your noise or I’ll drown you myself,” said John.

  “Gen
tlemen,” said Mrs. Waverly, in a supernaturally calm voice, “If you don’t cease quarreling at once, I shall begin to scream. I shall scream and scream. In truth, I don’t believe I shall be able to stop screaming. And you shall face the choice of either drowning yourselves, or enduring being trapped on an overturned boat with a ceaselessly screaming female. Have I made myself quite plain?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they all replied.

  “How nice. Sejanus, could I trouble you to catch hold of Mr. Tudeley’s wrists, in order to keep him from slipping off the boat? And he in turn shall anchor you. Thank you. Mr. James, would you please hold my wrists in the same manner? Very good. And now, gentlemen, I shall teach you all a merry and diverting catch to pass the time.”

  “What?” said John.

  “We are going to keep our spirits up by singing,” said Mrs. Waverly, a hint of steel in her manner once more.

  “I have sung my last damned hymn,” declared Mr. Tudeley.

  “It isn’t a hymn, Mr. Tudeley. It is quite indecent. My late husband learned it from a drinking companion at Oxford. It is a song, in fact, about an ugly woman. Now, which of you is a baritone?”

  Nobody answered, and presently she warned “I’ll start screaming…”

  “I’m a tenor!” said Sejanus.

  “I’m a countertenor!” said Mr. Tudeley.

  “Well, what’s a baritone sound like?” said John, who had sung in the choir at St. Augustine’s as a boy but found more interesting pastimes once his testicles had descended.

  “Deep, like a bull. I think you’re a baritone or a bass,” said Sejanus.

  “I suspect he is too,” said Mrs. Waverly. “Now then, Mr. James, I shall teach you the first part of the catch.

  “Taking his beer with old Anacharsis

  Quoth surly Swashbuckler, ‘Your wife, sir, mine arse is!’ ”

  “Madam!” said Mr. Tudeley, appalled. Sejanus chuckled.

  “Sing it, Mr. James!”

  John repeated it, fearful of her tone, some three or four times before they all agreed he had the melody pat.

  “Now, Mr. Tudeley, it will fall to you to sing the lines of the ancient philosopher. I am sure you’ll prove equal to the task.

  “ ‘Vous avez,’ quoth Sage, ‘she’s a homely brown lass,

  But after a bumper or two she might pass.’ ”

  With trembling voice, Mr. Tudeley sang the verse after her. He was indeed a countertenor.

  “What a delightful voice, Mr. Tudeley! And yet I am sure you have never had the benefit of a surgeon.”

  “I am fully intact, I assure you, ma’am,” said Mr. Tudeley, rallying a little.

  “What a pleasant thought. Now, Sejanus, here is your verse:

  “Th’ advice was so right it converted Sir Knight

  Who all his life after drank Saturday night.”

  Sejanus sang the tenor part clearly.

  “Very good, gentlemen! Now, in a round, if you please.”

  Hands joined over the keel, they sang the bawdy old catch, and their voices echoed out across the night. After about the fifth repetition John got the joke, and roared his verse lustily as though he sat by a sea-coal fire in Hackney, with a pint-jack of ale in his fist.

  They sang it until they were thoroughly weary of it, and then Mrs. Waverly led them in a song about a courtier and a shepherdess, and when they had worn that out John taught them Will You Buy Some of My Fish, and later Mr. Tudeley—to everyone’s astonishment—taught them a song to the tune of The Vicar of Bray that had nothing whatsoever to do with matters ecclesiastical.

  The sea grew still. At some hour in the long night the cloud-rack broke up, and stars glimmered through. A sliver of crescent appeared down near the horizon, sending a white trail of reflection across the water.

  At some point thereafter, Mr. Tudeley’s rendition of The Stinking Tinker broke off in a hoarse shriek of terror. The others, startled, scrambled as far up the hull as they could manage. John watched Mr. Tudeley, expecting to see him pulled below the surface. Sejanus tightened his grip; but Mr. Tudeley continued to hang there, with a curious expression on his face.

  “I believe I’m standing on something,” he said.

  And in the silence that followed his remark, John heard what he had not noticed over their music, in the last few minutes: the sound of breakers, beating close by in the night. Now that he looked up and around, he saw that his companions were visible in the gloom, that the night had drained away into pallor, and a dark mass of land lay before them.

  * * *

  It transpired that Mr. Tudeley was standing on a submerged rock. As the light grew greater they saw many black spires and lumps of rock protruding from the sea, with cloudy surges boiling around them. Somehow they guided the overturned boat past, swimming, threading the maze to a narrow crescent of stone-studded beach.

  Once on the sand they were able to right the boat at last. John and Sejanus had to go down on all fours and shove it along with their shoulders, to get it above the tideline; they had lost all strength in their hands to grip, after so many hours of clinging on. Mrs. Waverly and Mr. Tudeley stumbled ahead of them, making for a grove of palm trees. There they sat down, plump, upon a sort of lawn of coarse grasses.

  “We’re saved,” Mr. Tudeley croaked. Mrs. Waverly only nodded, too weary to speak. John and Sejanus got the boat safely on dry land, with a last grunt of effort, and collapsed on either side in the sand. John lay his head on his arm, meaning to rest for a moment before getting up to spy out where they might be.

  ELEVEN:

  Dead Men

  WHEN NEXT JOHN KNEW anything there was a hot sun burning his legs. He lifted his head and blinked, dazzled by a confusion of greens and whites and blues that resolved into the beach and grove in the full light of noon. His head burned; he had a raging thirst.

  He sat up. Sejanus had crawled far enough forward to be lying in the shade. Mr. Tudeley was curled on his side under a palm tree, clutching a coconut to his bosom. Both men were snoring. John looked around for Mrs. Waverly. He saw only a line of footprints trailing away up the beach.

  “Oi!” He scrambled to his feet. Sejanus lifted his head and looked around. Mr. Tudeley sat up blearily. “Where’s she got to?”

  They followed the footprints down the beach. “Doesn’t look as though she was carried off by anyone,” said Sejanus. “She wasn’t running, either.”

  “What would she run off for?” said John, thinking uneasily of Tom’s letter and the four thousand pounds.

  “Where do you suppose we are?” inquired Mr. Tudeley trailing behind them. He was still clutching his coconut. “The Spanish Main, perhaps?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought we’d run that far,” said Sejanus.

  “How does one open one of these, do you suppose?” Mr. Tudeley turned the coconut round in his hands.

  “There she is!” John broke into a run. Mrs. Waverly had come around a low hill, walking back toward them. She carried a bucket. John, reaching her well ahead of the others, said: “You didn’t ought to go off on your own like that. No telling where we are. There might be savages.”

  “There aren’t,” Mrs. Waverly replied, in a colorless voice. Her eyes were red; she had been weeping. “We’re on an island. We are alone here, save for the dead.”

  “The dead?”

  She turned and pointed back the way she had come. “They’re all along the beach. Some from the Harmony, and others I didn’t recognize. Perhaps they were from the Dutch ship. There is a great deal of wreckage. We ought to try to salvage it.” She looked down at the bucket she carried, and held it up. “And I found a spring of water. We shan’t die of thirst, at least. I brought you a drink.”

  John grabbed the bucket and gulped the water down before remembering his manners. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and muttered hasty thanks. Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley got to them at last.

  “Drank it all yourself, did you, you brute?” said Mr. Tudeley, in indignation. John handed him the empty bucket.
r />   “Fetch more yourself. Where’s the spring?” He turned to Mrs. Waverly.

  “Just around the hill. You’ll find it,” she replied. “I believe I’ll go gather fallen coconuts, shall I?”

  She walked away from them without another word. They stared after her a moment, and then went carefully around the headland, wading part of the way.

  A long expanse of beach opened out before them on the other side. John, shading his eyes from the glare with his hand, squinted into the distance and saw that there were indeed dead men lying all along the line of the tide, and others tumbling in the surf. Far down he thought he saw a broken mast sticking up, from rocks just offshore, but whose it might be he could not tell.

  They walked forward in silence, until Mr. Tudeley spotted the spring coming down from the cliff to one side and made for it with a cry. They drank greedily, all three, scooping the water up in their hands when they couldn’t bring themselves to wait for the bucket to fill.

  “I reckon we ought to go on and see,” said John at last. Sejanus nodded and they walked on, once more following Mrs. Waverly’s footprints. She had zigzagged along, going down to the water here and there to pull barrels or lengths of rope up on the sand. Here she had paused by Anslow’s body and turned him over, but gulls had already lighted on him and begun to peck at his eyes. John chased them away and pulled Anslow’s shirt up to cover the face.

  “We’ll need to bury them,” said Sejanus.

  “What with?”

  Sejanus shrugged. He found a broken oar and hefted it. They walked on. Mrs. Waverly’s footprints veered away from the dead men, for a great distance after that, until they came to Captain Reynald’s body.

  He lay with one arm flung out, as though pointing. They could see where she’d knelt beside him for a while; the print of her gown was quite distinct in the damp sand, where she’d dragged him from the surf. The gulls hadn’t started on him yet and he looked young and handsome, almost as though he was sleeping.