The Mermaid's Child (16 page)

“McMichaels wants you,” he said.

He was standing by the window, facing me, but dark against the tropic's glare. I tried to straighten myself, stood as best I could before his desk.

“It's amazing what a little discomfort does to a person's appearance,” he said. He moved over towards the desk, planted his hands on the wood, leaned forward to peer closer at me.

“Not such a pretty face now Reed, eh?”

It had been gathering inside me all this time. Now it was making my fingers tremble, making my jaw clench tight. My hands curled themselves into fists. I don't think I've ever felt hatred like this.

“Still good friends, are you, John Doyle and yourself? Still great chums?” He gave a little uneasy laugh. “Look at you. No one in their right mind would come anywhere near you.”

He moved away, back towards the window, and looked out. My lips almost moved, my tongue instinctively attempting to form an answer, but no words came.

“This is a sorry state of affairs I find myself in. A sorry
state. Here we are,” he said, “no more than a day's sail from our destination, and I find myself burdened with a troublesome, corrupting crewman who won't do the decent thing and die when he is flogged to mincemeat. And that leaves me in something of a dilemma.” He paused a moment, lifted a hand to glance at his nails. “I've been mulling this over for days now,” he continued, “and I still can't quite make up my mind. Tell me what you think. Should I keep him by me, keep this bad apple to his contracted five years, just under my eye, so that I can be sure that the rot won't spread, because we can't let vice and slander and rumour go unchecked now can we? Or,” he paused, cupping one hand inside the other behind his back, his head swivelling round to look at me. “Should I just sell him at the Western Isles and see what I can get?”

His face was a shadow against the light.

“What do you think, Reed? What would you do in my position?”

Underneath the bold words there was an uneasiness of tone. Even in my fury I could detect it. No matter that he'd had me flogged, no matter that he'd almost broken me, no matter that he could be rid of me tomorrow, there was something in him that was afraid. Afraid of me, or of what I might say, or afraid that he still wanted me. It didn't matter.

I opened my mouth. I was going to tell him that I couldn't give a shit where he found himself, tell him how wrong he had been about John Doyle and me, tell him that he was a coward and a fool and that before he could get rid of me I'd tell everyone on board that he'd made me suck his sweaty cock.

But my lips moved soundlessly. My tongue was clumsy. Not a word. I brought my hand to my mouth.

He came closer to me again, looking into my face.

“What is it, Reed? Cat got your tongue?”

The rest of the day, to all outward appearances, passed much as any other. When the watch was over I lay awake for hours, face down on my pallet, listening to the ship. The birdcalls of sailors up above, the creaking timbers, the muffled sounds from the cargo hold below. And closer, John Doyle's breathing, soft and dry. There had been land on the horizon: as the sun had set, there had been a slender thread of dark against the glare. A day's sail away, McMichaels had said. No more than that.

He'd never feel at ease, not entirely at ease, until he was rid of me. I might not be a threat to him anymore, but I'd always be a reminder. Desire and jealousy and pleasure and guilt: he could never quite feel comfortable with me nearby.

I listened to John Doyle's breath above me. I remembered cool hands battering the keel.

It was hardly a decision. I didn't seem to have much choice.

The ship was growing quiet. All day we had been running before a fair wind. Easy going. Above, in the darkness, sailors would be dozing at their posts, slumped forward onto folded arms at the tiller, lolling back against top rails with eyes fast shut and mouth fallen wide, or with a cheek pressed against a spar, dreaming. In steerage, the sleepers' collective breathing was like the sea, patterned, multifarious. And just above, in her hammock, the soft and quiet breath, the gentle rise and fall of John Doyle's breast. Cautiously, I eased myself
onto one side, then up onto my knees. I crouched, then stood up, uncoiling slowly. She was sleeping, lying there suspended at chest-height. A curl had fallen down over her forehead. I stood a long moment, just looking. Then I bent down, opened my kitbag, and drew out my Da's old clogs.

The moon was half-hidden by cloud. The lookout was dozing: a spindle of drool hung from his open mouth. No sounds from the watch. No one called out to me. I would hardly attract much attention, even if I was seen. Just another of those many nights without sleep.

In the darkness, the lid of the cargo hatch looked more solid than ever, unshiftable as a tombstone. I knew this was going to hurt. I lowered the clogs onto the deck by their laces, then crouched down and tucked my fingers underneath the rim of the hatch. I heaved. My back seemed to catch fire. The hatch lifted an inch, a handspan. The pain was incredible. A gap appeared between the deck and the lid. I knocked one of the shoes into the gap to wedge it open. I heaved one more time and shunted the clog along towards the hinge. I released my hold: the hatch stayed open, held up by the bulky wooden sole. A space of two hands' spans, no more. Just enough to slide a body through. And not enough, I hoped, to draw attention to itself. I lifted the other clog, took it round the far side of the hatch, wedged it tight into the gap. I'd have to leave them there, there'd be no getting them back now. But Da would have understood.

I took a breath. And then I eased myself down into the darkness.

Ankle-deep in filth and straw. Something furry brushed against my foot: I trod on something that wriggled then crunched under my weight.

They weren't packed as tightly as they had been at the
start of the voyage, so it didn't take me so very long to free them all; men, women, still a handful of children left alive. I could barely see them, just got a sense of different bulks and shapes in the darkness. Mostly they just lay in silence, their eyes catching whatever glimmer of light there was, but one of the men took a swing at me the moment his hands were free, landing a right hook squarely on my chin. As I stumbled away to the next set of shackles, the next pair of wrists tacky with sores, I was faintly puzzled to find that he hadn't knocked me out, or even knocked me over. Even in the dark it was clear he was a big man. My chin hurt: I would have a bruise there, but a right hook from him should have sent me flying halfway into next week.

One by one, as they were released, they moved to the base of the ladder. I saw them standing there, looking up at the sliver of blue night above. Someone put a hand out: the fingers gripped a rung and a figure began to climb. Others followed, heaving themselves out through the gap. I came to the furthest corner of the hold, the last bunk. There was a child lying there. When I touched her, her wrists were thin and damp, sticky where the irons had chafed her. From somewhere in the darkness a woman's voice was calling, urgent, low, but I barely noticed until I felt the child shift under my hands. The same word was repeated, and I turned to call out
she's over here
, but the words wouldn't come.

As the shackles came away in my hands the woman was beside me, leaning in to lift the child past me and away. I felt them brush by me in the darkness, turned to look after them. For a moment there was only darkness, then the hatchway cleared briefly and I watched as the child was lifted, hoisted to someone higher up the ladder, passed to the next pair of open arms. At the top of the ladder, she was slipped through
the opening, into the night air. Someone stood aside to let her mother pass. The last few remaining people followed after.

Silence in the hold. I wiped my palms down my britches, swallowed, then picked my way back to the ladder. I began to climb. I had half expected the hatch to be slammed down, to find myself stuck down there: there would have been a certain justice to it. But as I slipped my hand out through the opening another hand closed round my wrist and I was hauled up and through the gap, biting my lip against the pain. I was set down on the deck. Hunched and gasping, I stood there in the moonlight, my wrist still clasped in the man's hand. I couldn't look up at him. He didn't speak. I wanted to say something, but I knew it was useless. We stood like that a moment longer, separated by languages and silence. I realized I was shaking, and that my lips were moving continuously, as if of independent will, as if desperate to fulfil a duty of communication. My wrist was released, I felt the lightest touch of fingertips on my head, and when I looked up, he had turned, and was moving away.

A moment passed. I could hear the sounds of stealthy movement round the ship. A muffled cry: the lookout woken from his doze and at the same moment silenced, a hand pressed tight over his mouth, another round his throat. I turned and walked across the deck, hitched myself up onto the rail. What chance would they stand as freed slaves, a day's sail from the Western Isles? I swung my legs over the side, looked down at the water. Black as ink. Another cry, abruptly cut off. A crewman's neck snapped in the darkness, before he could even register what was happening. I took a breath. I dropped down into the water.

I'd like to say that, as I swam out into the dark, I heard the
flurry of ropes through pulleys, the crash of one of the ship's boats hitting the still water, and the splash of oars as the slaves rowed themselves away to some kind of new life on a deserted or a friendly island, leaving the ship's crew relatively unmolested, but I still can't quite convince myself of that. There were screams, I know, I couldn't help hearing the screams. There must have been many deaths, one way or another. I know I heard the crash of bodies hitting water, and thrashing noisy panic as my crewmates floundered in the calm sea. I heard familiar voices crying out to God or mothers or to sweethearts. But I also heard the neat dive and strong slow strokes of a practised swimmer somewhere nearby: whoever it was, they would most probably make it ashore. John Doyle, I imagined. John Doyle or McMichaels.

I've wrestled with my conscience ever since that night. It wakes me in the small hours, descends on me out of the blue when I'm doing something quite normal, eating, perhaps, or smoking, or just watching the ripples on the river. A tangle of panic tightens in my chest, my hands begin to shake, and the meal, the pipe, the river is no longer there, is blotted out. It is unresolvable, this sense of guilt. What I did was right. I freed the slaves. What I did was wrong. I sent those other people to their deaths. I can't make this fit, can't make my way around it, can't even figure out if there was any point at which I could have done something else, could have made a different choice, could have circumvented that whole situation. But even if I'd never left the village, if I'd let the stranger make his moonlight flit alone; if I'd grown old and bent rubbing down the doorstep of the Anchor with generation upon generation of donkeystones, there would, surely there would still have been that ship, those slaves, such cruelty.

But enough of that. At the time, all I thought about were my chances of getting clean away. I knew I would not be missed. I knew that there would be no search parties. With the sounds of thrashing and floundering, the cries and shouts still loud behind me, I swam away, straight out to sea. They would come for me, I was sure of it. My mother's people would come for me.

TEN
 

They didn't. By dawn there was still no sign of them, and I was growing weak.

A wind had gathered overnight, whipping up the sea into madness: just keeping my head above water all this time had been a battle; a battle which, I was beginning to realize, I could no longer hope to win. The waves slapped into me, crashed over me, tossed me high and dragged me down into their troughs. Gasping for air, seawater slopped into my mouth, making me cough and retch. Again and again I lost my grip on the surface and sank beneath it. The water burned my eyes, ate at the lining of my nose. It was entering me through every pore.

To just give up, I thought. To just let go. To be claimed by the water and become one with it. Perhaps that was what I had to do before they'd come for me: perhaps that was how I could become truly one of them. Another wave hit me,
dragged me down. My arms still flailed instinctively, my legs still kicked as if tangled in wool, but I was aware of this only distantly, and without much concern. My eyes were wide open on stinging, misted submarine blue, but my head was exploding with light.

What I first noticed was the smell; musty, sharp, yellowish. I was lying face down on something hard, and I could tell by the ache in my ribcage that I had been lying there for some time. My left hand was lolling over an edge, hanging in clear space.

I was alive then, I realized. I hadn't really expected it.

I breathed in, felt my ribs expand against the surface, felt a catch in my lungs. There was a faint trace of music in my head, an afterthought of colour. They'd come for me. My heart began to race. I opened my eyes, pushed myself up onto an elbow. My sight was blurred, my eyes stung on contact with the air, stung still more when I squeezed them shut. I'd caught a vague impression of underwater dimness and of space. I raised a hand to rub at my eyes, and the movement shifted a cover which had been placed over me, had been tucked in round me as I'd slept. A gentle swell, a creaking timber: I was aboard ship. I gasped, heaved myself upright, blinking. The mermaids had not come for me: I'd been caught.