The Mermaid's Child (22 page)

“Wait a minute.”

I began clambering back down the shrouds. I stepped down onto the deck. I turned towards him, smiled.

He leaned forward, stood on tiptoe, and kissed me on the forehead.

“Well done,” he said.

The old man smell of him. I still remember it.

There was a sudden, distant crack, like lighting; then a noise I couldn't place, like a swift tear through fabric. And at almost the same moment a dull thud, and Jebb slammed
forward, slumping into my arms. Something hot and wet was pressing through my shirt and onto my skin. I staggered, held his weight, but it made no sense to me at all. He was slack and heavy, his legs limp. I lowered him down onto the deck, knelt beside him, and still it made no sense to me at all.

I rolled him onto his side. Grey-black and bent, bird-bone frail, a wet stain spreading darkly across his chest. His eyes had glazed over. I looked up. Something rent the air above me and thudded, with a burst of splinters, into the mast. Just above my head. I didn't stay to examine it. I hit the deck.

TWELVE
 

They were alongside. I scrabbled across the deck, hands and knees, buried myself in the angle between the cathead and the rails. They were on board in an instant, their tread heavy, their voices loud and rough after so much quiet. I couldn't catch the words, didn't understand the language. A canny little ship she must have been, I found myself thinking: well-handled, to creep up on us so swiftly. Out of the blue. Out of the white glare.

Pirates.

I curled myself up smaller behind the cathead. What could they want with us, I wondered. What could we have that would interest them?

The blood was cooling, drying on my shirt. It was sticking to my skin. It smelt sweet and foul and intimate. I knew from what I'd read that if they found me, Jebb, having died in an instant, would suddenly become the lucky one; that, if they found me, I would never have the chance to find my mother.

But if I stayed there very still, if I held my breath, they might just walk past and not notice I was there. They might just take whatever it could be that they wanted from the ship, and go.

From where I crouched I could see him lying crumpled and broken, like a nestling fallen from a tree. Milling around, the intruders' legs were visible from the calf down: some were barefooted and weatherstained, some wore boots. I watched, I heard the crunch of old bones as a boot was landed in Jebb's ribs. I fought the urge to vomit. I had brought him to the place where, the moment when, a man had levelled a pistol from another deck, squinted along its length, and fired. I had made it happen.

Bickering, a shouted threat. Then scuffling and a volley of angry syllables. And at the same time, there was movement all over the ship. Feet pounding up and down the stairs, hatches being lifted, slammed, the hollow thud of running feet across the boards. And I realized what was happening. They'd taken the
Spendlove
for a trading vessel, for a diminutive merchantman. They'd expected a good haul of spice or opium or tobacco, and were now in the process of discovering their mistake. All they'd find would be stacks of dusty old books to go with their heap of dusty dead scholar.

And then a hand gripped my ankle. I was wrenched backwards, scrabbling for a handhold, for a fingernail's gap between the timbers. I was swung up into the air and held, hanging upside down from my ankle. I had one thought: that's it, it's all over. And then instinct overwhelmed me, and I fought.

And as I struggled to get free, I was strangely, intensely aware of the tiny detail of the world around me. I was conscious of the way the breeze folded and stirred the shadows in Jebb's gown as he lay upon the deck, of the smooth lines of
the deck's planking sliding out towards their vanishing point, the masts reaching vertiginously down into the sky, the sails spread like nets to catch birds that might swim by. My shirt was falling down over my face: I smelt on it the scent of my own skin, was vividly aware of the pattern of warp and weft in the linen, the way that tiny squares of sunlight pierced through between them. I was conscious of the plane of my exposed belly, the way the muscles rippled and contracted as I fought, the ridges of my hips and ribcage. Perhaps life is condensed by the threat of death, distilled into instants, into these ordinary beauties.

In my peripheral vision, I saw figures collecting, circling round. I twisted, lashed out more furiously. A noise was coming out of nowhere, a sobbing, wrenching sound. The coughing up of utter disbelief, of misery. It was coming from my mouth. I pressed my lips tight, bit my tongue. I held it back.

Then I was dropped. I landed on the deck, winded. My head knocked against the boards. Next to me, Jebb's pale green eyes were occluded, vague. Behind them, a whole world had flourished, grown, had been wiped out in an instant. His jaw had fallen open; inside were yellowed, peglike teeth, pale curves of gum. There was something inexpressibly sad about the dryness of his lips: I felt, like ashes, the faint ghost of the kiss he'd printed on my forehead, and in that moment all the instinctive fury ceased, and my mind was crystalline and clear. To do that, to kill a man: they could have no notion, no sense at all that he was real.

I rolled myself over onto my back, blinked up at them. They had gathered around me, a circle of dark forms, their faces indistinguishable against the sky. A blunt exchange. I didn't understand the words, but there was no mistaking their meaning. There was no way that they would leave the
Spendlove
empty-handed. They'd want something for their effort. And however worn and travel-weary it might be, there is always, as I well knew, a market for young flesh.

I shifted myself half onto my hunkers, paused. No one seemed to register: they were too occupied with their discussion. From the tone and the quick-fire patterns of their speech, I realized that they were trying to allocate blame for their wasted effort, were arguing over what was to be done now to make the best of the situation.

I drew in a breath. The air whistled through my teeth. I'd sprint for the gap between two of the men, and beyond that, I could just glimpse it, the rail. I would leap up onto the rail and throw myself out into the air, then dive down, sliding neatly through the water's skin and away. And if as I raced across the deck, or as I leapt, or as I made those first strokes down into the milky water, a bullet should sing out after me and thud into my back, a sudden bloom of pain that stained the water pink; if I was to die now, if I made them kill me, at least it would be failure on my own terms: it was better that than slavery.

And maybe I would make it. Maybe they would miss.

Maybe the water would turn me into stone.

I heaved myself up to run. A pistol butt cracked into the side of my head. I'd barely made it to my feet. Through the fug of sounds distorting, of colour swimming into colour, of the acid smear of pain, I knew that I'd lost everything.

One of them crouched beside me, hauled me onto my side, set about tying my wrists behind my back, trussing my ankles. The others dispersed. I could hear the movement, feel the impact of their footsteps on the deck as they walked away. I registered dimly that the man tying me was expert and swift with his knots. I could feel the filthy yellow smell of his
breath on the back of my neck. When he had finished he stood up and nudged me with a toe. He left me there.

Sideways, cheek pressed down against the deck, I watched through eyes that couldn't focus, my vision supersaturated with light. The dark shapes of men were moving round the ship. I saw books, volumes almost as rare as phoenixes, being carried up from below, being brought across the deck. I watched as gilded bindings, silver clasps, chalcedony, beryls and carbuncles were ripped off and stuffed into pockets, bags and pouches. I saw pages torn from their bindings, shredded into fragments, flung in handfuls into the air. Such wilful, unnecessary destruction. I had smoothed a palm over those pages, I'd read them by the pale light of the southern night and then later by the warm glow of oil. I'd closed those covers over and turned to see through a window the first light of dawn spill across the sea. Moments earlier I would have shouted out in rage and shame, but I was now winded, heart-sore, and could not speak. I watched helplessly, half-blinded with the light, as these scraps of paper and vellum caught, were lifted on the wind, were carried up into the air, were brushed across the deck and away. They would land like mayflies on the water; a word, half a phrase, an illuminated letter, the ink softening, the colours smudging, staining the water for a moment.

Someone grabbed my shirt and hauled me onto my feet. Then I was lifted and dumped across a shoulder. An arm was clamped around the back of my thighs, holding me in place. The jolt of movement. Blood rushing, pounding in my ears; my head throbbing with pain. Pressed close, I felt the breath rasp through his lungs. The sour smell of long-worn leather, of dirty flesh: nausea rose inside me. I was sickened by the
sway of the gangplank; I was dazzled by the white glare of the sea.

A different deck. The different sounds and smells of a different ship. Not the ammonia stink of the
Sally Ann
, nor the fusty odour of the
Spendlove
. Something thick and heavy, something animal.

Then something else. I caught it on the wind and felt my heart contract: smoke. In the same instant I heard the snicker of flames catching, running, tearing through hemp, canvas, timber. I raised my head, peered out through swimming aching eyes one last time upon the
Spendlove
. The fire raged in her like madness. I watched as ropes burned, snapped, whipped down in showers of spark and flame. The mainmast swayed, fell crashing onto the deck. Through portholes and windows I glimpsed a hold full of fire. And Jebb's dark form still lay there hunched upon the deck as the flames licked and snapped around him.

A whole world, a whole universe had died.

THIRTEEN
 

Dry heat. Sweat ran down my skin like the tiny brush of moths' feet. People dressed in pale robes, in coats and britches, in brightly-coloured evanescent gowns were passing before me. Some had skin the same weather-stained brown as my own, others were as fair as milk, still others as dark as the slaves I'd freed.

I was standing on a dais in a market square, and I was dying for a smoke.

I wouldn't lift my eyes, wouldn't meet a single gaze. Head bent, I watched in my peripheral vision as the people passed before me, stopped in front of me, looked me up and down. As hands were outstretched to try the circumference of an upper arm, or to tug down the jaw and hold it to inspect the teeth, to lift the corner of the shirt and appraise the strength and shape of a thigh. I caught a word here or there. I'd picked up a little of the language, enough to know when it was me that was being spoken of. I knew the word for slave.

I'd thought that I was prepared, that I was in command of myself and would at least be able to acquit myself with dignity. But then I'd been led up onto the dais and I realized that nothing on earth could have prepared me for this.

My mouth was dry: my tongue played continually at the back of my teeth, trying to gather moisture. I was aware of the other captives there beside me, all of us ranged along the dais, mute, our hands bound and heads bent, a community in misery. I was conscious of each one of us alone, probing at our own particular sores of loss and fear. I was wrapped up in the fierce hot consciousness of my own body, of the ghosts of innumerable alien hands and eyes upon my flesh, and at the same time I was dizzy with the knowledge of the people who were passing there before me, the multiplicitous worlds that they were living, each of them bound by the darkness of their own skulls. These universes unfurling, overlapping, thick and plentiful as cherry blossom. And at the same time, contrary and compassionless, flickering, catching, spreading like the fire in the
Spendlove
's hold, a blind hot fury played within me. That was why, more than anything else, more than fear or shame or misery, I did not look up. If I met somebody's gaze, I was certain that they would see the flames flicker in my eyes.