Coffins (19 page)

At that moment, at the very instant when I had almost convinced myself not to be afraid, the wind suddenly piped up and spoke through the vibrating shrouds. It was not as if we heard recognizable words resonating from the shrouds. No, not words as we could understand words. It was enough to hear the sudden wind transformed into the amplified moan of someone in great distress or incandescent rage. Then the wind increased and it became not one moan, but many. A great moaning of humanity amplified and alive in the way a sounding board makes piano strings resonate more loudly.

“Mmmmooooooaaaannnnnaaaaaaaahhhhhhhoooooooh!”

My knees trembled so violently that I lost balance and tumbled to the deck not far from where Jebediah lay, his face bathed in the ghastly light. My friend looked more than merely cadaverous, he had the look of a man who had just been condemned to spend eternity in hell.

“There is no need to kill me,” Jeb croaked, “for I am already dead.”

Suddenly the air itself became more dense, as if we had all been cast in dark amber or molten glass. I knew what must happen but could not move to save myself.

“Cover!” Tom Coffin screamed from where he stood, legs braced at the helm, hands on the wheel. “Take cover! Save yourselves!”

Then it struck. First a blinding flash, then the
CRRRRAAAAAAAK!
of the smoking foremast crashing to the deck as a bolt of lightning exploded in the shrouds. A moment later the vast expanse of sails caught the full brunt of the sudden gale of wind and the ship was knocked down. We careened heavily to one side—was it port? starboard?—I knew not where I was facing, and had room for only one thought, striking like a small bell in my mind: we are doomed, doomed, doomed.

And yet the noble little ship, though knocked flat into the still placid waters, did not completely capsize.
Raven
's spars were immersed as the top of the remaining mast touched water and then, slowly, as if inhaling very painfully, the mast lifted away from the seas and
Raven
began to rise.

Through all of this I clung to the deck and to Jebediah, who did nothing to save himself. At last the schooner righted herself. The seas she'd taken aboard roared back through the scuppers. We bobbed and shook like a dog ridding himself of water as the deck rose.
Raven
still lived.

The first thing I noticed, aside from my own tangled proximity to the damaged rail (another inch or two and Jeb and I would have been flung overboard), was that the wind had dropped as fast as it had risen.

We were once more becalmed and in thrall to the relentless current.

“Cap'n Tom!” a frightened voice cried out. “Where's Cap'n Tom?”

I looked back to the helm and saw that the wheel had been smashed away by a fallen spar. There was no sign of Tom Coffin, who had been handling the great spoked wheel when disaster struck.

Untangling myself from Jebediah, I ran to the rail at the stern of the ship, searching the dark waters. Barrels and parts of shattered spars bobbed nearby, turning and whirling in the current, but I could see no sign of the young captain. Could he swim? I wondered. If so he might save himself. Or even if he couldn't swim he might be clinging to a piece of debris in that icy water.

The medical man in me was calculating how long poor Tom might last in the frigid waters before his blood thickened, when suddenly
Raven
caught something beneath her keel and began to rise, her hull groaning. There was a series of small, muffled explosions as her ribs cracked and her planks sprang open.

Our collision with the reef was not so violent as I had feared it would be. It was as if the seas had grown tired of us and simply handed the ship up onto the rocks without further ceremony. When
Raven
settled, the decks were actually almost level, and I saw that the schooner had been pinched between two enormous, barely submerged boulders.

The broken hull sighed as seas began to circulate through the newly rent openings below the water line. It was obvious that although
Raven
had been fatally damaged it could not actually sink any farther. Thus we had all the time in the world to gather our things and board the waiting whaleboat, which was miraculously unscathed by either the lightning or the sudden squall that followed.

I was attempting to help Jebediah to his feet—he was muttering strangely and seemed disoriented—when a hollow voice cried out from the bow of the dead ship.

“There! Look there! It's our Tom!”

I ran forward, my heart curiously light with the hope that our young captain had been found alive, floating unharmed.

It was my last true moment of hope, for what I found turned my heart to stone and my blood to ash. Had I a soul it must in that horrible moment have shriveled like meat on a spit, and departed myself forever.

For there, impaled on the shattered bowsprit, hands and feet still writhing as life ebbed from his body, was our brave Tom Coffin. The great splinter of oak had passed through the center of his abdomen and protruded a yard beyond. In the throes of death his neck arched and his handsome head was thrown back. His mouth worked silently, piteously, as if he wanted desperately to say something. But it was impossible, for the spar that passed through him had taken the last breath from his lungs. Still he would not die, but struggled like a bug on a pin.

I had never before wished for a man's death, but his final agony was such that I prayed for his heart to stop.

Eventually, of course, it did.

III

MONBASU

The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people. It is the source of their glory and wealth.…

GEZO
,
KING OF DAHOMEY

1. The Cask and the Kiss

Our return to White Harbor was a kind of long and ponderously slow funeral cortege. We proceeded first by paddle-steamer, then locomotive, and finally by horse-drawn carriage, and in the whole of the journey my dear friend Jebediah spoke scarcely a word. There was nothing insensible about his grief—he was perfectly aware of his surroundings and his companions—it was as if he could not bring himself to speak. Such was the depth of his sorrow and dread that no words could express the loss of his cherished brother, or the inexplicable tragedy that had stalked his entire family.

I left my little friend to his enormous silence, and took it upon myself to arrange our transportation, and to notify the surviving Coffins of the latest catastrophe. By the cold, inhuman pulse of the telegraph they were informed that the schooner
Raven
had been destroyed, that Thomas Coffin was no more, that Jebediah and the rest of the crew had survived, and that we had been taken from the wreck by a passing paddle-steamer, which had sighted our unhappy party soon after the fog lifted, and sent boats to rescue us.

In Portland Harbor, destination of the paddle-steamer, I hired a cooper to seal Tom Coffin's remains in a rum-filled cask, which then accompanied us on the remainder of our sad journey. Jebediah had approved these arrangements with a nod of his heavy head, which lately seemed too large for his diminutive body to support. He sagged in his seat, chin down, staring at the hole in his world, and seemed, by my reckoning, to be well beyond fear.

He was, indeed, like a man already dead, and what have the dead to fear?

Alerted by my telegram, cousin Lucy kept vigil for us under the portico, wearing a black, hooded, full-length cloak that made her appear a stern and spectral figure. As our carriage came to a stop I saw her eyes register the newly made cask and then darken, as if she knew what it must contain. She raised a hand in silent greeting, a simple acknowledgment of shared sorrow, then turned and hurried into the house.

A moment later Barky emerged. With a gentleness derived of great strength he lifted Jebediah from his seat and cooed, “Young Jeb! Poor soul! You're home now, home with us that loves you.”

My little friend did not respond, but he allowed the burly cook to carry him inside. After directing the men where to place the cask—it was taken to one of the sheds, to await more specific instructions—I joined Lucy in the kitchen, where a simple meal had been laid out.

“Shall I pour?” she asked, holding up a glazed teapot. When I nodded she filled a cup, leaving room for a generous portion of dark Jamaican rum, which she added without comment. I hadn't the heart to refuse, or to explain why that particular form of alcohol conjured such morbid thoughts. Out of politeness I downed the stuff like a dose of vile medicine, and was glad of the punishing burn it produced from throat to gullet.

Lucy then sat beside me and took my hands in hers. There was a look in her sad, lovely eyes that convinced me she wished to speak, but wanted me to prompt her.

“How are things here?” I asked, a quaver in my voice.

She sighed deeply, and then gathered herself. “Terrible, as you might imagine. Unbearable, really, but what choice do we have? We must bear it.”

“The brothers?” I asked. “How did they take it?”

Tears brimmed from her liquid blue eyes. Her voice was as soft as a caress, but infinitely sad. “When Benjamin and Nathaniel learned, it was as if they themselves had been struck dead. As if they became, in that moment, ghosts instead of men.”

“Where are they now?” I asked, looking around the kitchen, which we had to ourselves.

“Ben has gone to tell his father. Nathaniel bides with his wife, at one of the rooming houses.”

“Poor Benjamin,” I said, mindful of the difficulty of imparting yet more bad tidings to the madman in the tower.

“Yes,” Lucy breathed, squeezing my hands. “The only good news is that you have returned.”

God help me, but my thoughts went to the last time her hands had touched mine, and the carnal heat that had coursed through my blood, and the icy chill that had followed. When I gave an involuntary shiver she drew her hands away and laid her palm upon my forehead. “You've taken ill,” she said gravely. “I shouldn't wonder. With all you've been through. With all you've seen.”

“Not ill, exactly,” I said. “Sick at heart.”

“Your telegram said only that Tom had perished and the ship gone down. How did such a thing happen?”

I'd wanted to spare her the specifics of our ordeal, but instead found myself spilling the tale and leaving nothing to the imagination. I even told her, God help me, how we'd had to saw through the broken bowsprit and pry poor Tom loose from his deadly perch. As if something in me wanted to punish her for not being there to see it with her own eyes, for not suffering exactly as the rest of us had suffered. But rather than shrink from the horror she pressed me for details, and I felt bound to comply, though it would surely ruin her sleep forever, as mine had been ruined.

When I came to the last, she placed her hands on her bosom and moaned as if she, too, had been penetrated by that great splinter of oak. Closing her eyes she wept and then suddenly collapsed upon the table. “So it is true what they say!” she gasped. “They are cursed, all of them!”

I begged her to tell me what she knew of this wretched curse. Little enough, she said, only what Jebediah had said, that night when he held the pistol to his head. “But why should the Coffins be accursed?” I asked. “What makes them think so?”

Lucy shook her pretty head as she wiped her tears 'way with my hankie. “I've heard Jeb allude to it in his darker moments,” she said. “I assumed he meant he wished he'd never been born to such deformity. When he was a boy, you know, the others taunted him with that. As if his was the punishment for the sins of the family.”

“Sins? What sins?”

Lucy gave me a curious look, as if startled by my naiveté. “Oh, the sin of success, I suppose. When a family gets too high above itself, there are plenty of volunteers eager to bring them down a peg.”

“You speak of envy?”

“Envy isn't a strong enough word for what I mean. I don't know what word is. I take it you did not grow up in a small town?”

I shook my head. “I grew up in Boston, Hub of the Universe.”

The jape brought a small smile to her lips. “Yes, I've heard it called that.”

“I assure you, there's no lack of envy in Boston.”

“Of course not. But the envy I speak of takes a different form in a small town. In Boston you think you know everyone, but what you really mean is you know everyone worth knowing. Everyone within your circle. In a village like White Harbor, remote from the city, relying upon itself, everyone really
does
know everyone else. They know each other intimately, in a way that city folk never do. They know each other's strengths and weaknesses. They know who said what to whom, and who did what to whom. They know each other's most shameful secrets, and they remember it all forever.”

“You just ruined my postcard,” I told her.

“What?”

“Nothing. Please go on.”

“Remember that Cash Coffin was born in this village. No doubt he was a snot-nosed boy like all the other snot-nosed boys who race the streets, no better and no worse. But unlike the others, he grew up to be rich and powerful. Not only a shipmaster, which is a kind of royalty here, but the owner of a fleet of ships. So naturally there are those who thought him high above his station, who resented his success, his wealth. Some, I'm told, resented his five strong and perfect sons, destined to be ship captains like their father. Understand that Rebecca Coffin had five children, and all of them survived, and all of them were boys. Look around at the other family graveyards and you will see how many died in infancy. How many had one child perish for every one that survived.”

“I know something of infant mortality,” I reminded her softly.

Lucy looked startled, and her cheeks colored. “Of course you do. I'm sorry, Davis. I forget that your medical experience took you into the poor wards.”

I shook off her apology, which was not required. “Why do you say that Rebecca Coffin had only five sons? Jebediah is the sixth son, is he not?”