Easton's Gold (18 page)

Obeying the order, Gabrielle slinks back into the corridor. She runs along to the exit, feeling as fragile as a leaf.

Visions flash through her mind of the two stocky men storming into Fleet's cabin, perhaps breaking the door down and pushing him aside as they open the barrel and gasp the captain's mouldering remains.

But how could they have known so quickly
?

She comes into the daylight of the deck. The crew and a few servants are standing by the deck rail, some shuffling their feet, some looking upset or angry. In the crowd, she makes out Maria, white-faced and crying. Then she sees Jacques and Jute standing close together, even touching at the shoulders.

As Gabrielle joins the throng, she scans the crowd for the Marquis and for Fleet but finds neither. Panic rises and twists like a knot in her stomach. The Marquis and Fleet are not with the rest, she thinks, because they are the two suspects. It will be the Marquis's silver-tongue, his rank, and his respectability against Fleet with his multiple, furtive secrets and the captain's body secreted in his cabin. Who will they believe?

Feverishly, she tries to think of a story that might back up Fleet's innocence or at least one that might explain how a good man could be driven to murder. She finds herself searching the deck to choose among the five or six settlers and officials who are sullenly keeping guard. She wonders who among them has the most sympathetic face.

Only now does she see the blanket on the deck. It is close by the wheel. Everyone in the crowd seems focussed upon this, and Gabrielle suddenly realizes the blanket must hide the body. Her stomach jumps at the thought that they have upturned the barrel onto the deck. But something catches her eye and causes her mind to still. Showing out from under the blanket and catching the sun is a pink scalp with wispy grey hair. With a huge wave of relief, Gabrielle realizes it is the Marquis. It is he who is dead; they have not yet found Captain Henley's body. All is not lost for Fleet.

Then, like the suction that follows that same wave, she finds the panic returning with twofold strength. They are going to search the ship for stowaways, they said—they will find Henley in the barrel. And more than that; if the Marquis is dead also, then who was his assassin?

She looks over at Jute again. Last night's conversation gave him every reason to avenge his captain's death. But he seems too calm for a murderer, too at one with the man at his side. He stands preoccupied, even bored, whispering to Jacques and looking around.

And where is Fleet?

__________

F
LEET COMES AWAKE AT LAST
; it seems he has been locked in a dream for hours. It was a weird, revolving phantasm, full of wild storms and inconceivable situations. He saw his mother barefoot in a nightdress, a tempest around her. Hissing foam flew all around the black beach rocks upon which she stood.

“The rocks are slippery!” he called out to her, but his voice was swallowed up by the roar of the waves. His mother put her finger to her lips as though to shush him. She lowered her hand into a white sack, which hung from a loop around her neck, and pulled out a skull. She looked at Fleet and smiled. Though no words were spoken, Fleet knew the skull was Easton's.

Then Fleet was on a deserted deck, a knife in his hand. Easton stood at the wheel, his back to Fleet. Again the ocean roared like a pride of wild lions, the ship rocking one way then another as the torrent hissed and spat foam across the deck. Fleet approached Easton and held the knife high in both hands, but when it came time to plunge, he could not. It was as though his arms were held tight by unseen shackles.

Next, his mother entered his cabin, walking softly like Gabrielle. It seemed natural and expected, and Fleet did not question her presence. In his mother's hand was Easton's payment of gold. She opened the snail barrel and let the coins drop.

“I know you could not kill him,” she said softly, turning to face him last.

“But I promised,” Fleet replied.

“It doesn't matter. What you cannot do while you are awake, I will help you perform when you are asleep.”

Then his mother reached up high into an unlit corner of the cabin, plucked the skull from the darkness and held it in her hands.

Remembering the dream, Fleet shakes his head and thinks of drowsing on. But a commotion in the corridor beyond makes him turn and then sit up straight. He notices now that the ship is hardly swaying; they are surely anchored.
Are there strangers on the ship
? The voices are loud, and there is the sound of cabin doors being thrown open. Fleet jumps out of bed and quickly throws on his clothes. Footsteps approach.

Fleet pulls his mother's skull from under the bedclothes and slips it into his sack. He secrets the sack under the blanket then stands. The door flies open, and Fleet backs off again to the bed and sits. Two men stand in the doorway, their faces keen and unfriendly.

“Who are you?” says the taller of the two, a bearded man.

“Fleet,” he replies, his lips numb and uneasy. It's a long time since he has talked to anyone but Gabrielle, and the attention of the two men is invasive. “Fleet the apothecary.”

“Are you deaf?” says the barrel-chested man by his side. “Have you not heard us about the ship?”

“I've been asleep.”

“Oh,” says the bearded man, touching his companion's arm. “You're the one with fever.” He seems to back off a little way.

“I had fever,” replies Fleet. “I'm better now.”

“You look a little white to me,” says the barrel-chested man.

“Really,” Fleet says, “I'm better.”

“Well, you must come on deck,” the second man continues. “We're rowing you all to the harbourfront for questioning.”

“Why?”

“Why?” the bearded man says, blinking with impatience. “Because your captain was found this morning face down with a knife wound in his back.”

At first Fleet thinks it's a joke and almost smiles. But the faces looking down at him are grim.

Fleet gets up and walks between them and into the corridor. He feels nothing but a numbness about his ears.
I couldn't have done it. But then again, what could I not have done during such a dream? And what did my mother's words mean? “What you cannot do while you are awake, I will help you perform when you are asleep.” It's too great a coincidence
.

Fleet emerges into the blinding sunlight of the deck. The breeze ruffles everyone's hair as they stand. Gabrielle emerges from the throng by the deck rail, takes Fleet's arm and draws him into the crowd. To his light-deprived eyes, her skin is like shining gold, her black hair a rainbow of reflecting colours. He totters dizzily as she guides his arm toward a rail.

A galloping vibration overtakes the ship's hull as the crew begins climbing over the deck rail and scaling down rope ladders. Fleet peers over to see fishing boats and punts waiting beneath. He tries to look over to the settlement that awaits them, but he has to flinch from the sunlight on the water and gets only a brief impression of wooden shacks, long storehouses, and two or three stone buildings. This must be Havre de Grace, he thinks. He came here with his father many years ago to sell fish and get supplies. It seemed a mighty city to him then. Now it is like a toy village.

An official motions everyone else to climb down the rope ladders. Gabrielle edges in closer to Fleet as they move along the rail.

“They're going to search the ship,” she whispers in his ear.

Gabrielle goes over first, with a worried backwards glance. Fleet follows, putting his leg over the side and gripping the rough rope. With his back to the sun, everything goes unnaturally dark. His eyes still sting from the light.

Fleet imagines the searchers finding his mother's skull, and the thought makes him feel sick. They will joke and perhaps throw it about the cabin. Then they will find the gold in the snail barrel too. Will it make him seem all the more guilty when it comes to Easton's murder? As they search the panels and find his hidden gold, they will assume this is the cause of his murder.

His feet touch down upon the swaying punt, and he catches Gabrielle's worried gaze again. Now it hits him. It is neither the skull nor Easton's gold he should be concerned about. The former captain's corpse barrelled in his cabin is the one detail that puts the rope around his neck.

Gabrielle lays her hand on Fleet's arm, and they both crouch down in the punt.

“What will we do?” she whispers.

Fleet shakes his head.

Noises echo through the planks beneath them as more passengers—Jacques, Jutes, and Sykes, the bursar—land on the punt and struggle to get seated. A couple of settlers take hold of the oars and push off from the ship straightaway. They row quickly toward the pier, the punt low in the water. Fleet turns and looks back at the ship. It seems deserted now, save for a solitary watchman who stands, hands behind his back, like a sullen, misplaced figurehead.

Gabrielle stares at Fleet all the way, her eyes urgent and appealing, but Fleet merely gazes back at her. Any expression other than blankness would be utterly futile.
I have been playing at being free all these years, and now the game is over.

A good-size fishing boat ties up to the pier ahead of them. It is loaded mainly with crewmen from the ship, but Maria is there too, her handkerchief in her face. Fleet's punt steers toward the other side of the pier, and the two settlers stand to make their landing. One throws a rope, the other leans over and holds onto a post.

Gabrielle whispers urgently to Fleet, “They will find Henley.”

Fleet only nods and gives a faint sigh.
Why waste energy on a sigh
? His throat is constricted, and he finds it hard to swallow—a premonition, perhaps. He hears the creaking of wood and the stretching of rope as the punt pulls firmly to the pier. He wonders how long he will have to wait before he hears that sound again.

Fleet and Gabrielle both stand. People climb from the punt onto the pier, where they join those from the larger boat. Fleet holds back for a few moments.

“I am lost,” he says, as Gabrielle tries to lead him from the punt.

She turns and looks at him quite crossly for a moment.

“Don't play the criminal,” she whispers, glancing around to make sure there is no one to hear. “Don't make me ashamed of you.”

She tugs him by the sleeve once more, then she turns and climbs onto the wharf.

Fleet follows.

T
he interrogation is chaotic, like a battle in which no one resolves to charge, yet no one holds their ranks. Crew and servants stand in a large clump, officials and settlers guarding. Sometimes a guard will come and push someone back in the group who has been adjudged to be straying. Confused shouting breaks out now and then between officials. A crow sits silent on a nearby storehouse. Another joins him, and they both silently watch.

Gabrielle squeezes Fleet's wrist. They are in the middle of the forty or more suspects. Fleet looks down at her and nods.
At last he is coming alive. At least he may fight for his innocence
.

She doesn't know why she is so sure Fleet did not kill the Marquis, especially after all his talk of revenge. But he seems too dazed for a murderer. In any case, they know each other too well for such a revelation not to pass from one to another just as a fire passes from tree to tree during a drought. And there is Jute. Jute's wish for revenge is fresher and less complex than that of Fleet. There is no father-son bond between Jute and the Marquis.

She knows that even if Fleet is innocent of the Marquis's death and can prove it, it is Henley's body they must explain once the ship is searched. She is working furiously to find some evasion that could possibly satisfy the authorities. Nothing comes, except a desperate hope Henley will not be found.

After much barking and pushing, it emerges that the man in charge is a wiry, sharp-eyed official who stomps about grumbling orders of no specific purpose to the guards.

“Keep…come on, keep them all together. That man put him over there.” As the crowd become more restless, he changes tack and shouts questions at the captives.

“Who among you had access to the armoury?” he asks no one in particular.

There is a shuffling of feet on the stones.
Why doesn't the fool at least take us inside
? Gabrielle shivers. It is not warm despite the sun, and a crowd of curious women and men is beginning to gather some way off. They stand still and attentive, reluctant to even talk among themselves in case they miss something.

“I have access, sir,” Sykes mumbles after quite a pause.

“Who? Who said that?” says the interrogator, darting from person to person as though suspecting a trick.

“I, sir, the bursar.”

He swoops upon the bursar and draws very close to him.

“Indeed, sir? Then you have much to answer for when the governor comes back.”

“So did I have access, sir,” says the first mate standing near them.

The sharp-eyed man goes to the first mate.

“And who else?”

“No one else,” replies the first mate. “But you forget the crime was committed with a knife. A galley knife, if sharp enough, would have been enough to pierce through the Marquis's back.”

“Well, who had access to the galley?” says the interrogator, losing patience.

Jute speaks up. “The cook and myself, sir,” he says.

The interrogator's eyes widen, and he tramps over to Jute.

“He was with me all night,” says Jacques.

The interrogator halts in his tracks, and everyone turns to Jacques.

But a call from the ship's watch stops everything.

“Send a boat! We're on fire!” the watch calls.

There is a general gasp as everyone turns to the ship. A great plume of dark smoke rises from the cabins. The watch waves his arms frantically. The interrogator signals some of the settlers by the wharf. Two men run down the pier, one unties the rope, the other jumps in the punt and readies an oar.