Authors: George Bryan Polivka
“Why, Damrick! Welcome back!” Ryland stood from his desk as Damrick entered his cabin.
“You seem surprised to see me.”
“Not at all,” the smooth businessman answered. “Why should I be surprised? Did all go as planned?”
“No, actually. It did not.”
“No? What happened? All went as planned on this end.”
“Someone told Conch Imbry that our target was the Cleaver and Fork.”
“Really? How could that be?”
“Hard to know. Unless it was Motley.”
They heard footsteps above on deck. The anchor winch clinked in a metallic staccato.
“But I gave Motley the information we agreed upon. I told him you were planning an attack on the
Shalamon
.”
“Did you?”
“Of course!” Ryland was indignant. “I'm sure he believed me. I was shot dead on account if it, for all he knew. Of what do you accuse me?”
Damrick looked away, shook his head, looked upward, looked back. “You make me tired, Ryland.”
“Tell me what happened!”
They felt the ship heel gently to port. They were under sail.
Damrick walked to the bunk and sat heavily. “I really should shoot you.”
Now Ryland was alarmed. “Shoot me? But what on earthâ?”
“Just shut up. I don't want to hear it. I know about the letter.”
“What letter?”
“Stop. Please. The letter from the Church to Conch Imbry. The one you were carrying to him in secret, to tell him he could marry your son's wife.”
Ryland glanced at the floor panels.
“Yes, the one you hid here.” Damrick scuffled the rug away from the floorboards with a boot. An iron ring was fitted flush with the floor. He grasped the ring and pulled it open. “Are you smuggling, too, Ryland?”
“No. That'sâ¦for personal protection.”
“To hide yourself. From whom? Pirates? Or from me?”
“Look, I don't even know what that letter said. A churchman gave it to me. It was addressed to him. What was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to tell me about it. But you didn't, because you've been doing Conch's bidding. You told Motley we would attempt to rescue Jenta at the Cleaver and Fork. Admit it.”
Ryland blew out his cheeks. “I didn't,” he lied. “Maybe Conch was there in force by coincidence, I don't know. I'm just glad you survived.”
Damrick stared at him.
“I've risked everything to side with you. Don't you see that? I feigned my own death for you!”
“You did that because you can't resist playing both sides. Dying for his cause, you'd be beyond suspicion. Doing what I asked, you'd convince me of your loyalty. Conch wouldn't hunt you down, and neither would I.
Once there was a clear victor you could proclaim your loyalty to whichever one of us was left alive.”
“I'm sorry your plans were foiled, Mr. Fellows. But I could never have planned all that out in advance. You have a very devious mind.”
“It comes of following a rat down a rat hole.” Damrick stood slowly, then grabbed Ryland by the collar at the back of the neck, and propelled him roughly up the stairs.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“I'm not going to do anything to you. Conch may not be able to say the same.” Damrick shoved him out onto the dark deck. The ship was already out of the cove, nearly to open waters. The moon was rising, huge and golden, on the horizon.
“You didn't think this one through carefully enough, Ryland. Can you swim?”
“You're putting me off my own boat?”
“Yes. Can you swim? Now would be the time to tell me, if you can't.”
Ryland raised his chin and tried to straighten his shirt and jacket, but Lye Mogene and Murk grabbed him, held his arms tight. “I have been loyal to you.”
“No,” Stock said, walking up to Ryland, putting his young face into the older man's. “I wasn't hidin' below deck, but was just inside the door. You tol' Motley the truth. I heard it. You was supposed to lie.”
Ryland sneered at his captors, but did not struggle against them. “The boy lies. But it doesn't matter. I'll have no problems with the Conch.”
“Won't you?” A woman's voice.
Ryland's head spun around, and his eyes strained into the dim light. But he recognized the source. “How did youâ¦?”
Jenta stood at the rail, leaning back against it, both hands on the polished wood. “Hello, Mr. Ryland. Please give Conch Imbry my regards when you see him. I'm afraid he won't be very pleased.”
“Dear Lord.”
“He might even be a bit angry,” Damrick added.
“But not with me! I tried to help him outwit the lot of you rabble,” he added, defiant now in defeat.
“Yet he was outwitted in the end. And so were you. You helped us, rather than him.”
“I did no such thing.”
“But you did. If someone as cunning and disloyal as you told me I should go to a pub and leave my ship unprotected, do you know what I'd
do? I'd do just what Conch did. He doesn't trust you, Ryland. He thinks you're working with me.” Damrick walked over and stood beside Jenta. She put her arm through his.
Ryland could not hide his disgust. “So it's Damrick now? Why you worthless little lowbornâ”
He was stopped by Lye Mogene's fist, which struck him squarely in the mouth. His head snapped back, his hair flopping into his face.
“Sorry, ma'am,” Lye said to Jenta. “Din't know he was gonna say that, or I'd a hit 'im sooner.”
“It's quite all right,” Jenta said. “He's said worse things to my mother and me.”
“He has?” Lye asked, astonished. So Lye hit him again. Runsford's knees trembled as quivering hands came up to fend off further blows.
“That's enough!” Damrick ordered. He pulled Ryland's hands away from his face, looked into his eyes. “Are you all right, Mr. Ryland?”
“Yes,” he said with disdain, jerking his hands free of Damrick's. “Leave me be.”
“As you wish.”
And Damrick leaned down, wrapped his arms around Runsford Ryland's waist, stood suddenly, and tossed the shipping mogul over the rail.
Jenta took in a sharp breath; Stock, Lye, and Murk all laughed aloud as the splash rose, white in the dark night, and disappeared.
“Will he be all right?” Jenta asked, looking after him.
“He won't drown, if that's what you mean.” They were but a hundred yards past the beach. Ryland sputtered to the surface behind them. Then he swore. Lye Mogene swore back.
Then Ryland turned and swam for shore, as
Success
sailed without him.
Ham's pirate audience cheered and laughed, pleased with the trouble Ryland had in store.
When they calmed, Dallis Trum spoke up. “But I don't get it. How did Damrick know Conch wouldn't go to the pub, when that's where Motley told him to go?”
“Well, it's like this,” Ham answered. “Damrick had worked it out so that Motley would not be trusted.” The rest were quietly amazed. Ham seemed actually to be answering the boy's plain question, and giving a plain answer.
“But wasn't Ryland really working for Conch all the time?”
“He was and he wasn't. There are men in the world, young pup, who won't choose a side. Which is why your pirate captains all require a blood oath, so's no man will be tempted. It's why the Gatemen did the same. Mr. Ryland, though, he never swore such an oath. But let me tell you what's happening in Ryland's head as he sits on that sandy beach all by himself, his nose and mouth bleeding and stinging from the salt water, his own ship sailing away into the night. He's got the whole ocean spreading out before him, and the moon coming up bigger than the sun, bigger than anything on earth, and that ship, his own ship,
Success
, just dwarfed by it, swallowed up in it, floating black like a shadow, impossible to tell if she's coming or going. And he's thinking about all his choices. He's contemplating how he might have made a different choice at that card table, and thrown everything away to save his son, and be sitting on a beach beside Wentworth watching that dazzling moon, but able to appreciate it, to enjoy it, because he did what he should have done. And though he'd be poor and living on coconuts, he'd be in better shape than he is now. Because now, he's trying to figure out how he's going to ever get his business back when Conch thinks he's dead.
“And the more he thinks about how he can explain it all to the Conch, the less he likes his story. He can't claim that he'd been straight with Motley, because then he can't explain why he isn't shot dead, or at least got a hole the size of a musket ball square in his back. No matter what he says to the Conch, professing how true he is, the very fact that he's still alive tends to argue against him. To prove himself trustworthy, you see, Ryland has to actually be dead. And no matter how he works it around, it always comes back to that. Only a dead Runsford Ryland can be trusted. So it's not a happy stretch of beach on which he sits.”
Ham stopped and puffed, his pipe crackling. He waited as his listeners thought through that little conundrum.
“What does he do?” someone finally asked.
“He can see only one way out. Runsford Ryland then and there makes a very grave decision.” Ham puffed his pipe again, the draw crackling the tobacco again.
“What'd he decide?” another asked, practically pleading.
“For that answer, you need to hear the rest of the story.”
When the groans died away, he continued.
Delaney ran a hand over his head, and it came back to him wet with
sweat. He wasn't sure why he'd started sweating; it hadn't gotten any hotter. Cooler if anything. The reeds were quiet now. If his audience of Hants were there, they were being particularly polite. The
Chompers
, too, were quiet, swimming easily. Hovering. Waiting. Nothing much had changed at the pond, except for the shadows that kept deepening. There were just the last little rays of sun lighting up the forest canopy now, way at the tops of the trees. Maybe it was that the air had gotten more dense or something.
Or maybe, maybe it wasn't the air at all, or anything in the world here, but rather something in that story that got into him and made him sweat from the inside out. Maybe what Ham said about Ryland, sitting on that beach regretting. Watching his ship sail off into a full moon.
Delaney felt for him, all of a sudden, even though he'd been a blaggard right along, and even though when he'd heard Ham tell the story the first time, he'd felt nothing but glee. But now it seemedâ¦Ryland seemedâ¦a whole lot like Delaney. He didn't feel scorn or contempt now, didn't feel at all superior. He felt just the same. Ryland had a full moon, and Delaney had a new moon. Ryland had a beach and an ocean, and Delaney had a post and pond. Ryland was trying to figure out how to keep from getting dead because of Conch, and Delaney was trying to keep from getting dead on account of mermonkeys. But how did that make him different? Both of them were blaggards.
Delaney had only turned his back on his girl, while Ryland had turned his back on his son. That was true. Ryland was worse there. Delaney took a deep breath. So maybe they weren't the same after all.
But then, Ryland had a reason for what he did. Wentworth had crossed him and had made his own bed, so to speak. And Wentworth was a grown man, besides, who could do as he pleased. Delaney couldn't even remember why he'd done what he'd done, walking out on Maybelle Cuddy like he did, and leaving behind their own son or daughter they might have had one day. Little babies, who couldn't even care for themselves, and he'd left them without a father. Or a mother, for that matter. He thought of Maybelle now, with another man's little boy on her knee. Delaney had left his own child there, for another man to have with her. Somehow.
The sweat returned. And now he knew what it was. It was shame. He felt ashamed. And that sweat, that was just the shame needing to come out of him because it filled up all that was inside, and had nowhere else to go. So it just oozed out of every pore.
T
HE
S
HALAMON
WAS A CUTTER
, larger than most pirate vessels, but still fast and highly maneuverable. She was dark, made of night-oak, a wood both prized and rare that came from the Forests of Suleâthe sacred grounds of the Hants. The wood was supple and lightweight when cut, but when cured it turned almost black, hard as the knots of other oaks. If it wasn't cut and drilled and nailed green, there was no way to cut or drill or nail it.
Now the
Shalamon
's sails were trimmed for hull speed, all ahead flank, and the black ship raced south and east behind the
Success
. Conch Imbry stood on the quarterdeck under the full moon, which was not giant anymore, but still bright where it had risen overhead. The wind whipped his perfect hair into a wild mop. He looked over the ocean, saw a low wall of darkness far off in the east. He scanned his own ship, the main deck, and his eyes locked onto the great iron grate, the one that generally covered the hold but was now lashed open. He watched for a time the man who hung there, stripped to the waist and tied by his wrists. A bloody series of stripes crisscrossed his back. Blood stained the top of his trousers, where it had run down and dried. His head lolled back and forth with the rhythm of the ship on the billows. Conch felt the waxed tips of his moustache, just to be satisfied the wind hadn't mussed them. Then he walked down the stairs to the main deck, crossed over to the grate.