The King of Shadows, page 12
It remained to be seen. Tomorrow, the island.
Tonight, sleep. Restful or otherwise, but in any event a small escape from the prison of reality.
Three
The Island
Ten
Came the age-old mariner’s cry from the crow’s nest, the same cry set down in ancient memory, in the tomes and in the languages of every sea-faring civilization that had ever existed on earth. That cry being: “Land ho!”
All save one had come up on deck at first light to either perform their duties or watch the approach. Cardinal Black was absent among the onlookers. Matthew wasn’t surprised since to his knowledge most spiders did prefer not only the dark but the security of their own entanglements. He stood beside Hudson at the starboard bow, with Falkenberg close by. Stroud and Tallow kept watch on the port side along with several of the other crewmen. Maccabeus DeKay, in a cream-colored suit with a matching tricorn to shield his mask from the early sun, stood back at the stern with Captain Brand at the wheel, and Professor Fell had taken a position at the midship starboard railing like a glowering shade of himself in a dark blue silk robe and a tasseled cap of the same color and fabric.
The Nemesis sailed on. The crow’s-nest lookout might have sighted land but it was not yet visible to the rest of the ship’s company. Around the vessel a red-tinged morning mist—to be accurate more resembling a dense London fog, Matthew noted—hung clung to the water and obscured all forward vision. In places the mist closed in upon the ship on all sides for a few moments, turning the eastward sun into a smear of brighter crimson haze, until the freshening breeze blew it away from the port and starboard sides. Yet the bow still plowed on through it, and Matthew caught the hint of a charred aroma that his senses could only describe as dead leaves aflame in the autumn.
“Nasty stuff, this,” Hudson remarked, but in a quiet tone for Matthew’s ears only. “I hope Brand’s charts show him any rocks between us and this damn place. I’d hate to be twice sunk.”
From the Great One’s concerns to the captain’s brain: almost right after Hudson had finished this statement, Brand ordered men with weighted lines to be stationed on small platforms on either side of the bow called “the chains.” As the Nemesis continued through the murk, the crewmen at the lines called back their soundings of depth according to the leather ties on the ropes.
“By the deep, seventeen fathoms!”
“By the mark, fifteen fathoms!”
“By the deep, thirteen fathoms!”
Matthew understood that when the measurement lay between fathoms—each fathom being six feet—the call would be by the deep, and if exactly on the leather marker it would be by the mark. In any case, the bottom was coming up.
And quite suddenly, the Nemesis nosed through the mist and there in the clear air before them stood the island.
Matthew had asked Brand if he might see the chart and was enabled to do so by DeKay’s approval. On the parchment the island appeared to be the shape of a splayed dog-leg, about thirty miles from west to east and ten or eleven miles south to north. What the chart could not show was that, though they had not yet reached the land of Vesuvius, it was definite to Matthew that the land of Vesuvius had reached them. Beyond the rugged cliffs at the shoreline and the green forested hills further on stood the jagged cone of a volcano perhaps a thousand feet high, shimmering in its own cloud of red-hued mist.
“By the deep, twelve fathoms!”
“By the mark, ten fathoms!”
“Secure sails!” Brand bellowed to the men waiting for that order up in the rigging. And a moment later, as the ship drifted into a small cove that protected a strip of rocky beach, he shouted with his leathery lungs to the man at the anchor chock, “Drop anchor!”
The chock mallet flew, the chain was released and the anchor splashed down into clear green water, the chain being visible fifteen feet below the unruffled surface. “Sounding!” Brand demanded. The report came back in feet this time instead of fathoms: “Forty-eight feet, sir!”
“Very good! Owens! What’s the view?” Brand was shouting up to the man in the crow’s nest, who was currently scanning the scene through his spyglass.
“I can sight no habitation, sir, but there’s a cart track coming down to the water’s edge about a mile to the east!”
Brand found it with his own spyglass. “Got to be fresh water here, with all this forest,” he mused. Then: “Secure from the crow’s nest and clear the chains! Mr. Gallaway!” This was addressed to the bosun. “Order up a shore party and prepare the longboat! Let’s get two barrels up and find some water. And I want men down on that rudder as soon as quick!”
As these orders were delivered and the crew went about to comply, Hudson leaned on the railing and scratched his beard. “Well,” he said to Matthew, “here we are … wherever this is.”
“Only for a short time.” DeKay had wandered over to stand behind Hudson, his tricorn throwing a shadow over the waxen mask. “Then on we go.”
“Fine with me. I’d dislike being here when that smoker erupts.”
“You might see,” said DeKay, “that the sides of that ‘smoker,’ as you put it, are covered with forest. I doubt it’s erupted for quite some time. Matthew, I appreciate that you’ve convinced the professor to start eating. It wouldn’t do to force a funnel down his throat.”
Matthew nodded but gave no further response. He was thinking about Fell’s statement: to successfully raise many of the entities from that mirror involves human sacrifice … I’d be the first … then Greathouse … then yourself.
“The sun’s going to be hot today,” DeKay said, with an eye toward a cloudless sky that promised to become blazing blue within the hour. “If you’ll pardon me, I’ll take breakfast in my cabin.” He turned away and departed for more comfortable shade.
“Another bout this morning?” Brom prompted when DeKay had gone. “It is good exercise, you know.”
“Exercise like that could kill a person. No, thank you.”
“I knew this man,” said Brom to Matthew, “when he had some life to him.” He spiced that statement with a wicked grin. “What did that Herrald Agency do to him? Made him into a milksop, it seems to—”
“Two people on horseback,” Hudson interrupted. He was staring intently toward the island, his eyes narrowed against the glare of sun on water. “Top of the cliffs, about fifteen degrees to starboard. You see?”
Matthew found them. “I do.” Two figures—difficult to say if male or female from this distance—sitting on their horses at the cliff ’s edge looking down upon the ship.
“Captain Brand!” Brom shouted. “We have observers!” Brand came alongside with his spyglass and took aim.
“Two men,” he reported. “Just content to watch, it seems. Oh … there they go. Turned their horses away and riding to the east. Out of sight now.” He snapped the glass shut. “Remains to be seen what our reception will be when we go ashore. We’ll need to break out a few guns, just to be careful.”
“I’ll lead the shore party,” Brom said, obviously eager for some kind of action.
“I’ll be glad to go as well,” said Hudson. “And I’ll need two guns. Three would be better.”
Both the captain and Brom stared at him for a moment without speaking, then Brand gave a thunderous guffaw, Brom clapped Hudson so hard on the back Matthew thought such a blow given to himself would’ve resulted in a broken spine, and after that tremendous slap of letting Hudson know he was not getting off this ship the two men went away to prepare the shore party.
“We could swim from here,” Hudson said once no ears but Matthew’s were in the vicinity. “Go over the side, make that beach and be gone before they could get the longboat after us. What say you?”
“I say … go ahead, if you please, but I have to stay here.”
“What? Who’s holding you but yourself?”
Matthew sighed heavily. How to make Hudson understand this; it would be difficult enough to make any reasonable man understand, and sometimes Hudson and Reason were inhabitants of different islands. How, indeed, to make himself understand it? But he would try. He motioned toward Professor Fell, who stood a distance behind them and seemed to be deliberating his own jump and swim. “I made a bargain. I have to see it through,” Matthew said, and was amazed that every fly on this isle—if indeed there were any—didn’t make a straight flight for the aperture of Hudson’s gaping mouth. “You’re joking!” he finally managed to say. “Even if you had a chance to escape, you’re telling me you would not?”
“I’m telling you … I would not.”
“The sun’s not that hot, but it must be baking your brain!”
“I would advise you to do as you please,” Matthew said. “But the old man lived up to his side of the deal, and I intend to—”
“The ‘old man’? Spoken as if he were the kindly tavern keeper who gives out sugar candies to the kiddies? Listen to yourself! Have you forgotten everything he’s put you through? And nearly destroying Berry? As for myself, first Richard’s murder and then that damn business dealt to me in the village! He is not your friend, Matthew! Neither is he your responsibility! Hear me?”
“Neither friend nor responsibility,” Matthew answered calmly. “A … client, I suppose one might say. I don’t believe I’ve run out on one yet. I won’t start now.”
“Oh my God!” Hudson actually retreated a step as if he’d been struck. “Oh Christ!” he said. “I see what’s in that mind of yours, and it’s as moon-brained as this entire jaunt! You’re thinking that since Fell’s men were executed as they were … he has no one to protect him from Black and DeKay! You’re thinking you can talk them out of killing him when the time comes, aren’t you? And in the meantime standing up for him however you can!” Hudson gave a snort of derision. “Up to me, I’d put the anchor chain around his neck and throw him over quick as a one-legged jig!”
“You paint a very exegetic picture.”
“Whatever that means. Like it or not … the good you believe you can do for him … that old bastard wouldn’t do the same for you!”
“Certainly he would not,” Matthew said. “But then again, I am not him. Neither am I you. I have to proceed as I think is right.”
“Maybe I can right your boat, then.” And so saying, Hudson strode toward Professor Fell. Matthew took off after him, and as they reached the professor the frail old man regarded them both with baleful eyes.
“Here’s your chance,” Hudson told him. “While everyone’s occupied … jump for it. You might well make that beach … it’s only about a hundred yards. I’ll be coming along behind you. How about it?”
Fell was a moment in replying. His mouth took on a grim smile. “My dear sir, I certainly would not ‘make it,’ as you put it. Though in my previous life I was a scholar of creatures of the sea and the mysteries of the depths, I unfortunately never learned to swim. And if you look at the beach and those cliffs behind it, I fail to see a climb to the top being anything more than a basketful of broken bones and a lingering death. So go ahead, I’ll track your progress.”
Hudson took stock of the beach and the rugged red-rocked cliffs. He quietly said, “Damn,” and Matthew figured that ended his preoccupation with a dramatic escape by sea. The longboat was lowered with two small barrels and a wheelbarrow lashed upon it. Falkenberg and three other of the crew all well-armed with pistols began rowing for the cart track that appeared through the forest at the shoreline about a mile to the east. At the same time, two men with their leather tool cases tied around their necks went over the side to attend to the rudder, their breathing tubes little more than flexible bamboo reeds that at least allowed them a bit more time to work underwater. So the work began, the sun rose higher, the Mediterranean heat built and the day shimmered on.
About an hour after the longboat had reached the shore and the men gone in search of fresh water, Matthew was on deck when a lookout called to Captain Brand: “Sir! Small boat coming around the headland to the east!”
Indeed it looked to be a fishing craft about twenty-five feet in length under a single mast. Brand watched it approach through his spyglass, Matthew also taking a keen interest in this new arrival. Hudson had found a place to stretch himself out on the boards in a slice of shade, and at this alert he stood up as fast as a hound at the scent of a fox and came to stand beside Matthew near the starboard stern. Matthew noted that Hudson had seen Brand’s pistol beneath the man’s jacket, but for the moment the Great One made no attempt to remove it.
The fishing boat came on, its sail full of breeze and its netting on a drying rack at the stern. As it neared, four men could be seen aboard the vessel, all of them dressed lightly for the weather and one at the wheel who wore no shirt. They were all also explicitly intent upon the Nemesis for it appeared that they spoke not to one another but simply stared forth at the larger ship as the distance narrowed. No weapons were in sight, but Brand removed his pistol and laid it atop the compass box next to his right hand. “Mr. Stroud!” he called to DeKay’s man who stood at the railing watching the boat approach. “Come over here beside me, if you please, and keep your pistol ready!”
The boat was almost alongside. Its sail was being hauled down so that the craft would drift up against the Nemesis. Matthew and the other watchers saw that the crew aboard this boat were all dark-skinned, but they were not Africans; it appeared that the Mediterranean sun had burned the flesh of these men into mahogany-hued leather. As the shirtless helmsman turned the boat so that its hull would only gently kiss that of the Nemesis, one of the men standing at the bow—dark-haired, dark-bearded and sinewy from obvious physical labor—called up to the watchers and seemed to be asking a question in a language that sounded to Matthew like a mixture of tongues. No one aboard the Nemesis could reply to this foreign lingo, and after a short silence the man posed another question. Though he was no expert on linguistics, Matthew thought it might be a hodge-podge of Italian, French and Greek with the addition of a clicking of the mouth at certain syllables and a nearly musical rising and falling of inflection and tempo. Indeed, he’d never heard such before and had the impression that neither had a single soul on board the Nemesis from the silence that continued on.
Then Brand cleared his throat and said, “Any one of you speak English?”
The men on the boat looked at each other with the same blank expressions as the crew on the Nemesis.
“Obviously,” Hudson said quietly to Matthew, “here we have a failure to communicate.”
“English!” Brand repeated. “Any one of you?” The silence continued.
“I … think … I know some of that tongue,” said the shirtless helmsman, who spoke the sentence with the same halting difficulty as if he had a mouthful of thorns and his jaws were made of rusted iron. He was an aged gent, though from the darkened and wizened flesh and all the wrinkles it was hard to say how old. Possibly in his seventies, Matthew thought. He had a long white beard and a head of curly white hair. Also he was thin and small, maybe only two or three inches over five feet, by Matthew’s reckoning. At this pronouncement in what more or less sounded like Britain’s tongue, the others stared blankly at him, and then one chattered to him in that foreign dialect. He nodded and left the helm to come closer to where Brand stood at the railing. “We …” The man had to pause to draw the rest of it up. “Welcome you,” he said.
“What island is this?”
Again it took the ancient a moment to formulate a reply. “Golgotha,” he said.
“Captain Evan Brand of the vessel Nemesis.” The captain touched his chest to emphasize the statement, as if speaking to either the most alien creature he’d ever met or to an idiot child.
The white-bearded helmsman blinked in the sun’s glare. He gazed along the lines of the ship and then looked into the faces of the others who watched him from the railing, Hudson’s and Matthew’s included. Then he returned his attention to Brand, lifted his left hand and placed it upon his white-furred chest. He said, “I am … called Fratello, of the boat Amica.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Brand remarked quickly to Stroud, who kept his hand on the pistol at his belt. To Fratello once again: “We have trouble with our rudder. Some men are working on it now. We expect everything in be in order within a few hours. Also …” He stopped, in Matthew’s thinking because he probably realized he was getting ahead of the old man’s comprehension. “Do you understand?” Brand asked.
“Rudder trouble,” came the reply. And then: “Where … do you sail from?”
“London.”
“Where?”
“London, England. En route to Venice.”
“Venice?”
The captain frowned. “Venice, Italy. Don’t you know where that is?”
Fratello spoke to the others in his language. There was a short conversation before the old man returned Brand’s inquiry. “We … here … have our own world.”
“I see. Well … I considered that we might freshen our water supply while we’re anchored … which, again, will not be very long. I’ve sent a shore party ahead to fill a couple of barrels. Does that suit you … and the others, too, I mean?”
“Water,” said Fratello. He nodded. “Yes. We have many wells. But … I am asked …” He paused, and Matthew saw his mouth working as if silently translating the island’s language into English before continuing. “We are asked,” Fratello corrected. “To invite you … all of you … to feast this night.”
“To feast? I’m not understanding.”
“You were seen this morning. The word … arrived … in the town. So … to …” Once more there was a long hesitation. “Honor you,” he went on. “Visitors. To feast in the palace.”
“The palace?”
“With King Tabor,” Fratello said. “To feast in the palace.
