Kage Baker - Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

“Happens in every marriage,” said Anslow, thumping him helpfully on the shoulder. “I been married three times, so I know. Once the honeymoon’s past, they find all sorts of reasons to turn cold.”

John just shrugged and said he reckoned so, and everyone complimented him for the stoicism with which he was taking things. He didn’t much care what Mrs. Waverly was doing a’nights, having concluded that she was a bit too sharp for his liking. Her mania for stealing oddments put him off too.

There was no further talk of that, at least. No one mentioned that their lost goods had been found again, though that was likely due to a disinclination to admit they’d simply misplaced things rather than had them stolen. John was grateful. Still on thinking it over he remembered how Mrs. Waverly had stowed her little trifles in his bedding rather than her own, and that further armored his heart against her charms.

“HOLD ON TO THE shrouds and put your feet on the ratlines,” John advised. “And don’t look down.”

“And which are the shrouds, pray, and which the ratlines?” inquired Mr. Tudeley, with a peevish glance aloft.

“The shrouds is the upright bits; the ratlines is what’d be rungs, if it was a ladder,” said John.

“Then why not call them rope ladders and be plain?” snapped Mr. Tudeley. He bore little resemblance now to the meek clerk who had come aboard the Fyrey Pentacost . He wore no shirt at the moment, having been advised that the quickest way to make his tattoo less noticeable was to acquire a tan. He was unshaven, red-eyed, with a prominent gap in the teeth of his lower jaw. His spectacles were bound on his head with string, and his graying hair stuck out on either side of the bind, over his right ear and the scabbed stump of his left ear. He gave off a pronounced smell of rum when he exhaled, for he had acquired the habit of taking a dram at intervals to calm his nerves.

“A ship has its own language, like,” said John.

“Sounds like damn’d idiocy,” said Mr. Tudeley, grabbing hold of the ratlines and starting up toward the crosstrees. “Oh, Jesus Christ, and I’m expected to mount upward like this in such a gale? I am a Job, a very Job, sir, that’s what I am. Is there no end to my suffering?”

“This ain’t a gale,” said John, smiling involuntarily. “This is just brisk. I’m coming up behind you, so you needn’t fear falling. You’ll get used to this so you run up and down just as though it was stairs at home, you mark my words.”

“ ‘ At home ’ you say? What home have I? Shunted from one place to another, all my bloody life, ever since I left school. The wife and I took a pretty little cottage on Hampstead Heath; she committed adultery with our landlord, and he had the effrontery to tell me to look for other lodgings, if you please! I lived in one wretched lodging-house after another until coming to the West Indies, and what a sty I was given for residence on that plantation! And to what had I to look forward at my sister’s, even supposing this filthy chance had not afflicted us, but a spare bed made up in a dusty corner of a gable?”

Spleen carried him as high as the crosstrees, where he paused, peering upward at the lubber’s hole and futtock-shrouds.

“Don’t go through the lubber’s hole there,” said John. “That’s only for—er—lubbers. Climb up around the outside, leaning backwards and hanging onto the futtock-shrouds to pull yourself over the edge of the top. That’s how a real mariner does it.”

Mr. Tudeley stared up openmouthed.

“Go fuck yourself,” he said at last, and went straight up through the lubbers’ hole onto the top platform.

“There ain’t any need to be uncivil,” said John, following him up over the futtock-shrouds.

“What’s a lifetime of civility ever gotten me?” said Mr. Tudeley, who had wrapped his arms and legs around the join where the topmast was fished to the mast and clung there like a limpet.

“Not killed afore now?” John stood up and surveyed the wide horizon. There was, as he had said, a brisk breeze, and the Harmony cruised along pleasantly. Only, far off to the east, was a smudge of some dirty color.

“Ha! I should welcome the quietus, sir. Here am I, obliged to wear spectacles after a lifetime of ruining mine eyes on copy-work, and who does the captain send up to keep lookout? Who but I, fortune’s whipping-boy? It makes no sense !”

“Things don’t make sense, much,” said John. “On the other hand, you ain’t any use at hauling and you don’t know the ropes. I reckon Captain Reynald is being charitable-like finding you something you can do. It ain’t so bad. All you have to do is watch all round the horizon, and sing out if you see a sail.”

“And meanwhile live up here exposed to the wind and the rain like a sodding stylite,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Though I suppose if you can bear your present lot, sir, I must bear mine.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Pardon me, sir, but the disgraceful behavior of Mrs. Waverly cannot have escaped your notice,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Why, I happed upon her yestereen in Captain Reynald’s arms, when I went up to relieve myself at moonrise.”

“Oh,” said John, surprised to feel a throb of jealousy. “I didn’t mean that. I know she’s been making sheep’s eyes at him. And he at her, come to that. I reckon she’s using her court-ways to get herself some more presents of emeralds. Much I care; like I told you, she’s only the widow of my mate at Panama. Nothing to me.”

“Then you are wise,” said Mr. Tudeley. “What did you mean, then?”

“About what? Oh. What’s a stylite?”

“A saint given to mortifying his flesh by living atop a high pillar,” Mr. Tudeley explained. “Abjuring any earthly pleasure, fasting and praying, and never setting foot on solid ground for years together. The simile is apt, I think.”

John decided not to ask him what a simile was. “Ah. Fancy that.”

The breeze changed its quarter and grew stronger suddenly, buffeting them. Its freshness had all gone; it was hot, like a wind out of an oven door. John turned his head to the east, out of which the wind had come. He watched the dirty smudge, and thought it looked as though it had spread up the sky a bit.

“Perhaps the Lord intended me to be a stylite,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Certainly I have not been destined for earthly happiness. God knows I have suffered constant mortification. 1 wonder whether that will mitigate in my favor, when I stand before the Throne of Judgment?”

“Maybe,” said John, feeling a prickle of sweat as the temperature went shooting up. Mr. Tudeley took out a filthy handkerchief, mopped his brow, and observed:

“There’s a sail over there.”

“What? Where?”

“That way.” Mr. Tudeley pointed. “Ought I to shout?”

“Aye! You’re the lookout.”

“Halllooo! I see a ship!”

“No, you stupid—Ahoy! Sail to larboard!”

“Well, that’s certainly set them to scurrying about like ants,” said Mr. Tudeley. He put his handkerchief away and unlooped a little bellarmine jug from his belt, in which he carried his rum ration. He uncorked it and had a thoughtful pull. “I suppose now we’ll assail some innocent vessel, slaughter her sailors, and take her cargo?”

“That’s the general idea,” said John uneasily. Both the stain on the sky and the unknown ship were moving quickly. The ship was now hull-up over the horizon and making straight for the Harmony , showing no inclination to evade her. Looking down, he saw Captain Reynald opening his spyglass to have a look at the strange vessel.

The captain regarded her in silence a long while, as gleeful men ran around him getting ready for the attack. They loaded small arms and piled them up, and brought up a coil of slow-match to portion out to the gunners. A whetstone was passed from hand to hand, as men put edges on their blades and boarding axes.