The Ephemera (23 page)

The Last Note Of The Song

Overture

The music begins far out and down deep, a shiver of strings and bells flashing up out of the nightwaters, fleet and sudden as mackerel. It breaks the surface with a sigh soft as the bow wake sluicing from the prow of a blackened merchantman, the painted name burnt away, the figurehead blinded. The music takes on the woody beat of plucked cellos and basses, the slap of oars, the draw of dory hulls through the chop, the stifled instructions to the rowers as they alter their bearing, a little down the coast from the lights of Montegrosso, a little further still to avoid that scattering of lanterns abroad on wreckers' business. The music builds to a dark boil as the surf draws the boats into the craggy cove at the place where the island's great mountain cools its feet in the sea.

Who hears the music? The monkeys do. It chases them, screeching flutes mocking their cries of fear, out of the jungle, through the plantation fields and into hiding in the eaves of the shacks and rusted lean-tos that fringe Montegrosso's periphery like a crusty scab. Here the music leaves off its malicious play. It's time for the serious business.

It changes its tune.

Now, rolling down the street towards the harbour square it becomes rousing, boisterous, avuncular.

Who hears the music now?

Everyone hears it, though few recognise it for what it is. Few, besides the one who has been listening for it—or something like it—all his life.

~

Gifts

The potboy's name is Roger. He weaves between tables, adds a tankard to the bunch in his fist, skips away from the drunken grasp of its former owner, treads on a booted toe and attempts to dodge the kick that will follow. Unsuccessfully. It's been a bruising night, but no more than usual. Working in the inn now is no different to the years in the orphanage, where a fair complexion and freckles were more than enough reason to attract abuse. He ignores the throb in his buttock, and finds himself humming a tune.

Now, where did that come from?

He listens, and faintly, under the inn's bray and clatter, faintly, under the coughs and chatter, faintly, he hears the music. His heart illuminates.

"I sense a gift," he sings. "I sense a lift from this humdrum..."

A querulous growl squalls up from the quartet of card players as he swings by their table. "Hey, Blondie!" The Magistrate grabs his sleeve. "More rum."

The blue pipesmoke stares of the Minister, the Pilot and the Harbourmaster add their heft to the command. "More rum," they chorus.

"Yes, sirs, more rum." As Roger scurries off he sighs to himself, "from this pitiable, humdrum life."

The bottles are stacked at the far end of the bar where Mrs Hutton slouches over the counter, displaying her blubbery, whalewhite
décolletage
to any who are desperate enough to cast a glance in her direction, which on any given night is most of the sorry tars unfortunate enough to be berthed at the east end of the harbour. The lazy cow could easily have served the gentlemen, but her attention is fixed on the door. So, Roger circumnavigates the woman's fat arse and retrieves a fresh bottle himself.

Cracking off the wax, he breathes, "I sense a lift from this fetch...run, beer...rum, hum...drum life."

He had thought that last utterance had been under his breath, but Old Andy must have heard it because he has hefted his squeeze box up to his mutton-chopped cheek and wheezed the line right back at him. It's a plaintive, pathetic sound right enough. Roger plonks the rum bottle on the card players' table and then drifts off to resume the quest for empties.

But the music won't leave him alone. The strains he hears aren't pathetic, they stir him. The music makes his heart skip and his fingers itch and the sudden, embarrassing hardness in his breeches twitch.

"I sense a gift," he sings, louder this time. "I sense a shift to a life of adventure."

Behind him someone—the Magistrate from the snide tone—snorts a laugh.

"I sense a lift from this life of indentured drudgery. I see. Something coming for me."

"The only thing you'll see coming, my lad," Mrs Hutton's grip on his shoulder makes him jump and the dregs slop from the pint pots. Her eyes barely flicker from the door. "Is the back of my bony hand, if you don't hold your noise. So be glad of what you have." She spares the room a sheepish shrug. "Honestly," she sings, hoarse and coarse. "Boys!"

More laughter. This time he does look and it seems that everyone is in on the joke...well, maybe not everyone. There's a stranger in the corner who's been nursing a jar all evening. Not the sort of fellow you'd notice particularly, just an ordinary looking down-on-his-luck sailor, but there's something about the square of his unsmiling jaw, the eagerness in his eye that sets him apart. That and the brazen wink he tips in Roger's direction. Oblivious, the proprietor deals him one last pinch before waddling back to the bar.

The music roars in Roger's ears like the wind on the cliffs, tug-tugging him towards the crumbling precipice, towards the waiting waves. It makes him want to scream like he sometimes does when he goes there alone.

"I hear escape," he sings in quiet defiance. "I hear escape from this slavish confinement. I hear the call to a life of excitement. I hear the song of the open sea..."

Something
thunks
against the inn's front door.

"I sense a shift," he chokes as a second
thunk
shivers the old oak timbers.

"A lift..." His voice is little more than a whisper.

A third and final time.
Thunk
. The door swings open. Cold, salty air knifes through the soupy atmosphere. The warped timbers frame a view of stars and the darkling sea.

Roger's lips move, but there's neither the breath nor the hope in him to sing, "I sense a gift for me."

Then there are men filing into the inn. Their oilskins are slick wet, their boots crusty with sand. Their coats are bulging to ridiculous proportions, one is even wriggling. The inn's residents take a sudden and intense interest in their beers.

Roger's heart sinks even as Mrs Hutton heaves her slovenly frame into action, bursting out from behind the bar like a cow off the transport just arrived from Blighty.

"Gifts!" she bellows. "Boy, you know what to do...at last we have gifts." A dunt in Roger's back throws him forward and he stumbles over to the cellar trap. "After so many weeks of arduous thrift," the bar owner simpers as if she knew the meaning of the word. "Such fortune, such kindness, such gifts." The oilskinned men shuffle nervously, three-quarter turned away from the Magistrate and his cronies who are affecting an equally unconvincing pretence. As Roger heaves at the trapdoor ring, Mrs Hutton aims a kick at his rear. "Well, hurry, you shiftless, listless lump. The gents ain't got all night while you lounge on your rump. Be grateful for once, though it's sad to say. That we've lucked from the flotsam of others' dismay. There's sailors out there who have gave their lives, there's orphans at home and there's grieving wives, and the Good Lord has seen fit to provide us with..." Now she has warmed to her theme there's no stopping her. It's just as well everyone in the inn knows well enough to forget everything she has said. "...this luck of the tides, this bounteous drift, these gifts."

The cellar trap comes at last and falls open with a crash.

Mrs Hutton shoots Roger a furious look, and then continues her ridiculous pantomime of obfuscation. "Gifts for everyone! Drinks on the house!" she bellows as if the noise of her braying will distract anyone's attention from the newcomers' progress down her cellar steps; from that dropped package, the squealing fury of the escaping piglet, and most especially the four bottles of good liquor slipped under the card players' table.

The clientele, of course, while not fooled for a second, are only too happy to play along. "Gifts for all," they sing, taking up her tune and thumping their tankards on the tables. "Drinks on the house."

Roger, immediately pressed into satisfying the demand, is rushed off his feet transporting armfuls of rum bottles and foam-flying mugs of beer to all corners of the bar room, all the while holding on to his own, pure melody as Mrs Hutton and her customers make a racket of their tawdry gifts, so he does not notice how the next thing happens. All he knows is that the Magistrate is blustering—which usually means trouble for someone—and rubbing furiously at the back his hand, and that his companions have forgotten their cards and are staring at him with a mix of cunning and slack-jawed fear. And that the stranger from before is nowhere to be seen.

It's the Harbourmaster, a stupid, superstitious man, who voices it, adding a disharmonious shriek to the cacophony.

"He's got the spot!"

The Magistrate pretends not to have heard, but slips the offending hand under the table. His whiskers twitch. "Sorry? What?"

"I said," the Harbourmaster grips the Magistrate's flounced sleeve. "You've got. The spot."

"No, I've not," the older man protests, but one yank and the evidence is there for all to see. An unmistakable mark, black and greasy.

"It's the spot!" chimes in the Pilot.

"It's grot," protests the Magistrate.

"It's the spot!" growls the Minister.

"What rot!" The Magistrate rubs hard enough now to scour away the layers of skin blackened by the mark. "It's a duelling scar, where I was shot!"

"The spot!" the three chorus now, ganging up on him. "The spot!"

The Magistrate is getting desperate, but he's surrounded by the crashing of tankards that sounds to Roger's imaginative ears as loud as militia rifles.

"Gifts for all," bellows Mrs Hutton, sensing the trouble even if she's not seen it yet.

"Drinks on the house," enthuses the rabble, like they're thirsty for more than booze.

Roger retreats in the direction of the kitchen. "I sense..."

The Magistrate's erstwhile friends have him on his feet now.

"We suggest," hisses the Pilot, "that you leave here and never return."

"You suggest? You're my friend. Now talk sense to me man..."

"We insist," continues the Minister. "Through that door now, make nary a turn."

"What's this? You insist now? I
insist
you unhand..."

"You've no choice," grits the Harbourmaster dragging the poor man to the door. "Lest the mob are to learn."

"I
demand
..."

"About your unfortunate little burn."

"Gifts for all," screech Mrs Hutton, scream the mob.

Roger flees for the kitchen door.

Outside is a blessed relief. Roger takes a shuddery breath of sea air. He can still hear the rabble inside, but the clamour has lost that manic edge. And now, faintly, he hears the music, and it reassures him.

"I sense a gift..." Roger sings, but he stops because the music has shifted cadence, become mysterious. And from the direction of the street there's a whimpering noise. The combination is compelling. Sidling along the wall, Roger comes upon an odd tableaux: a lamp standard illuminating the trembling outline of a man in the act of bending over a lumpy sack, like an image from a storybook rendered in cut-paper silhouette. The man's identity is no mystery. The Magistrate cuts a wretched figure, but it's not from him that the whimpers issue. The sack moves. The old man aims a tentative prod with the toe of his boot, but the moment that he does so four dark shapes melt out of the shadows like black wax. There's a burst of violence, a scuffle, a quickly stifled cry and then the shapes and the sack are gone. And the Magistrate is splayed out on the road, and the dark shape that melts out from beneath him is not wax.

Roger has barely time to stifle a gasp before his arms are pinned to his sides, his vision roughly obscured and his sensibility abruptly shut off by a thunderous rap on his skull.

~

Kidnapped!

The music sways Roger awake. He blinks. The world is too bright, its odours too sharp. The combination of them with the swaying sensation makes him nauseous. His mouth tastes sour, his head pounds. All he can think about is sleep. Instinctively he attempts to curl up into a ball.

A none too gentle kick in the pants denies any chance of that. A rough hand rolls him over.

"What's this?" The face is red and lumpy as a beetroot, as whiskered as the inn's ancient tomcat. "So the other one's awake?" A pair of chapped lips split into what may be intended as a smile, but the revealed teeth are as grey and eroded as the rocks of Lucifer's Spit.

Roger shrinks back.

"Naw, don't run away, fer pity's sake. Old Angelo be yer friendly, mate. Here..." The creature rummages a battered copper flask from his ragged britches. "Take a swally. Get you ship-a-shape, so it will." He winks. "And no mistake."

Roger is nervous of the bizarre old man, but the taste in his mouth is becoming unbearable. He takes the flask, sniffs the unstoppered neck, experience preparing him for something noxious, but it smells surprisingly inoffensive. So he takes a long, deep draught, and then immediately flops forward, vomiting up the burning liquid. He retches and retches until he is empty, his eyes streaming and his belly sore from the spasms.

"Oh, but that's rough," he croaks. "What is that stuff?"

"Nowt but old Angelo's grog," the old man cackles back at him. "Cuts right through the morning fog."

As obtuse as the answer is, Roger realises that it's also accurate. The drink has scoured the taste from his mouth and sluiced the furze out of his mind, and soon enough he feels well enough to sit up and consider his position.

He's in a damp, roofless, wooden room. The bright sky spins, dizzyingly high above his head. He's sitting on a pile of sacks between a stack of salt-stained barrels and a tower of crates. A knotted rope sways behind the old man.

In fact, in spite of the miraculous work done by that abysmal alcohol everything, still, sways.

A rush of realisation froths up from his belly like the air bubbles that leak from his mouth when he is swimming. It's a mixture of excitement and fear. It's got the tart, spicy flavour of adventure. The music had promised him a shift, after all...a gift indeed.