I
t all started with something as slender as a dream, a whisper from the gods. But there was nothing I could do stop it. Fate’s wheel had set its course.

My Uncle Levi had worked though the day on the sign for the Blue Whale Inn and by sunset it was nearly completed. The sign was so large and ornate that it had to be constructed of individual panels. It featured an excellent rendering of a large whale breaking the surface of the water. As a limner, Levi was considered first rate. And this was a beautiful piece of work, but Levi seemed to take little interest in it or any of his creations, and had not in many months. He claimed it was age.

When the final panel was complete, Levi stood the sign on its end before the open door and appraised it in the waning light.

“We cannot deliver it until the letters are carved in and it’s painted,” he said, directing his remarks out the door. “We’re out of indigo. You’ll have to go for more.”

“Shall I carve the letters in?” I asked. My uncle didn’t hear me, absorbed with the parade of carts and faces along our cobbled street, all on their way to the quay.

Levi was a man of tempestuous moods and humors. After my father had died, he and his wife Elspeth took my sister and me in. I was eleven years then and my sister Ruth but five. After six years I could read the text of my uncle’s expressions, and now, at seventeen, no longer feared that harsh edge in the man that could last for days or weeks. He savored a black philosophy about the world.

Indeed, as he stood there at the door that evening, cocking his dirty, mottled cap back on his grizzled head, I felt affection for the old man. Perhaps my uncle caught a vanishing trace of my thinking as he turned and looked at me.

“You’re a clever boy,” he said with a clever smile himself. “You never plot a step or say a word that isn’t three times thought over. Every day you plot my death.”

“Why do you say that, Uncle?”

“I say that because I know who you are,” said he. “It’s not a way to live your life, waiting for your sweet old uncle to die.”

“Is it not how you led yours?” I asked.

“Waiting for someone else’s death! Bah!—” He brushed the notion away as if it were a foul odor. “Men never die when you wish it, and when they do, they’ve bled away their fortune, leaving you with naught but a hot march to the churchyard.” He strolled over and handed me the marking chisel. “Take your dear uncle here. Into the world I came with but a hammer and file and out I go again with them.”

“You mean to take your tools?”

“You’ll need them for my funeral costs,” he shot back. “They’d fetch a good penny.” He held a small chisel up and admired it. “You cannot depend on these things, nephew,” he continued, watching me work over my shoulder. “I might live a hellishly long life. Or you might die before me.”

“I suppose you’ll want to be buried in a churchyard?”

“The law requires it.”

“In a wood coffin?”

“You cannot, by rights, toss me into a sack.”

“A fine one made with my own hands?”

“Not one I would lie in. Look here—” he snatched the tool from my hand and reworked the first three letters of the sign. “Make one for Elspeth. She believes when we die we fall into the arms of God. So what’s she needin’ a coffin for? Me, I’d like to meet Death in a proper suit of clothes and a tidy box, so He has to knock.”

“You will spare us the cost of flowers?”

This set the old man off to a rare crack of rusty laughter. When I didn’t join in, he paused and regarded me tenderly.

“I know you want your life settled, boy,” he said, resting his hand on my shoulder. “That will come in its day…but I had a dream about you.”

Levi was a deep believer in dreams.

“And what was that, Uncle?”

“You were in a strange city far away,” he said, regarding the street again as if the dream lay right outside the door. “It was a splendid world, but there was a man there who wished you dead and lay in wait for you. He was a heathen in fine robes. I couldn’t protect you.”

He gestured with his hammer toward the open door in a worried manner.

“The King has given the order. The convoy will depart tomorrow or the next day. Stay far away from the quay,” he said with emphasis. “They’re looking for men. Do you hear?”

“I hear,” I replied. “Stay off the quay.”

Levi looked back at the three remaining panels of sign and the dozen others lying about, then fished out a purse deep in his trousers, opened it and tipped out a few coins.

“Daniel,” he said, dropping a few coins into my hand, “a man leaves his life incomplete. You may have a good life, but never a complete one.”

It was then that I understood that the old man truly felt the finger of Death tapping his shoulder. I saw it in his weary eyes, which lifted strangely and took me in.

“In the dream,” said he, “a tall Englishman offers you a book.”

“What sort of book, Uncle?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, then: “If one is offered, be sure to take it.”

Once a year a great convoy of ships gathered in Bristol to sail under escort to the New World. To keep enemies from striking, the day and hour of its departure is known only to the King. Levi had an intuitive sense when the ships would leave, born from his life in Bristol’s floating harbor. There was a riot of activity in the streets that night; it sparkled with torches and lanterns, as those
sailors and pilgrims departing were celebrating their impending adventures.

Ruth, my sister, and I watched them from the window above the shop. It thrilled her. She leaned out as far as it was safe to keep her from tumbling down. I held her by the back of her dress just the same.

“You’ll break your neck,” I warned her.

“I want to go.”

“Where?”

“The New World, of course,” she said, brushing back her red hair with an airy gesture. “Think how wonderful, Danny.”

“You’re a blockhead,” I sniped. “We’re secure here.”

She reached back and smacked the hand holding on to her.

“You’re afraid, is all,” she said, adding in a contemplative whisper. “I would go.”

“I would not go with you,” I declared firmly.

She shrugged, tossed her hair back lightly again.

“Yes, you would.”

It was true. The mere thought of losing my bold, pestering little sister alarmed me. I playfully shoved her forward and held her out the window. She shrieked and laughed wildly.

“Go on, Danny!” she cried out. “I dare you to! Let go!”

I pulled her in. She turned on me with a rascally grin.

“See, I told you! You’d come with me if I went.”

I pulled in the windows and shut them. She rebelliously pushed them open again. This time she lifted herself onto the sill and straddled it, one leg dangling out. I took hold of her arm and tried to drag her in, but she held fast, squealing with delight.

“Fine, break your own head, if you have a mind to!”

I ended her game the only way I knew how.

“I’m going to bed. I must away to the Cross early in the morning.”

I walked off and heard her voice trailing me, the last time I would ever hear it in this world.

“You would go with me!”

Early the next morning as I started for the Cross, the central marketplace in the city of Bristol, I heard the sound of voices in the alley behind me. I recall nothing more, except a smart blow on my head and the blur of images as I was nimbly thrust back onto my feet again. Two men, faces as featureless as masks in the gloom, bound my arms behind me.

“March ahead,” one of them ordered, cautioning, “say nothing. Don’t cry out.”

I was prodded forward and led toward the quay, staggering over the cobblestones. I could hear my fear in my gasping, frantic breath. We went along at a brisk pace, away from the main avenues, in and out of sundry alleyways and lanes, when the first hint of daybreak began to light our way. I could smell the blood running down my face; now I could see it threading down my shirt.

“We’ll arrive shortly, my young patriot,” muttered the same fellow. The two men had relaxed their grip as we neared the quay. The dread and terror in my heart was such that my senses were keenly affected. Familiar street sights of the harbor seemed to watch my passing with reproach.

Over the drumbeat in my head and through my watery vision I saw we were approaching a warehouse bunked between a pair of falling-down houses. The brick faces of the houses were rosy from weather and creased from cheek to cheek. The two listed against their stout friend in a merry little grouping. Above the warehouse door was the sign “The Carolina Company.” I had passed this trio a hundred times before and strained to recall any association.

One of the louts beside me gave a stout knock on the door. The door was opened and I was steered through, past a blizzard of dock flies. The chamber within was a black as pitch. We stood some moments as our eyes calmed to it. In the distance there was a dim lamp. I heard voices and a low sobbing. As the shroud of darkness lifted, the shapes of two other men, standing, revealed themselves, both rough characters. The larger of the two wore a filthy cambric and a massive glaive, rusted through the basket, about his waist. On the ground before them sat five frightened young men,
all bound like myself. Three had injuries equal to my own. One appeared unconscious.

I was directed to sit beside the unconscious one. I noted that he seemed perhaps twelve or fourteen years, while the others, including myself, were no more than two or three years older, and as woeful and terrified as was I. The man with the sword dispatched a crack to the side of the head of the boy who was sobbing, which brought him up. The men I saw now were common derelicts and rabble, poor men who often came begging at our door.

“’At’s six,” said my escort. “Good haul, boys.”

The door was closed and the four men retreated to the lamp some yards away, taking seats on a number of barrels arranged as if in anticipation of someone. Silence fell. I had liberty now to observe my companions more closely. One boy I vaguely knew. He had a thatch of red hair and skin as white as porcelain. The others were unfamiliar to me, each face streaked with muddy tears. One boy, though bound, had no marks on him and no evidence of mistreatment. The one beside me appeared dead but for a faint, fitful panting that came now and again. Every manner of speculation on our abduction shot through me like lightning. Trying to divine a dreadful glance from one boy to another, I took some comfort that the nightmare of these misshapen circumstances was equally shared.

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