False Colors (32 page)

Outside, dawn had begun to break over a colorless world. The floating mountain showed as a mass of lighter grey in a pewter sea. Great storm anchor cables stretched between
Albion
and the berg in perfectly straight lines, and as Alfie and his crew added their weight to the capstan bars, turning it one more pace, and then another, the ship gave a shivering groan and, heeling to one side, lifted a foot further out of the sea. Water trickled, then plumed from the jagged gash beneath her bow, taking ballast and bodies with it, but they rode the iceberg like a louse anchored to a man’s head, saved by the very force that had tried to crush them.

Alfie made a final hitch on his line, securing the heavy, slushgreased canvas tight against the scarred flank of the figurehead, and turned. John stood there, in a long boat-cloak whose hood hung far enough over his face only to show sharp cheekbones and pools of darkness for eyes. John’s full, almost feminine mouth smiled, veiled in steam. “I brought you a coffee.”

Alfie hesitated before taking it. Though indolent and ineffectual, Gillingham was no fool. He had assigned Alfie and John to opposing shifts at sea so that they were scarcely ever awake at the same time. On land, John had been in charge of the surveying expeditions, being gone for months drawing maps of the coast of Newfoundland and Baffin Island. Alfie, in charge of provisioning, had spent the same months fishing and hunting seals. They had scarcely had to say more than “good morning” or “good night” to one another for the whole voyage, and Alfie had been half expecting that this stalemate would continue forever.

Last night’s work, and the morning’s, had only increased his respect for John. Knowing himself safe, Gillingham was now back in bed, and if the
Albion
’s captain had been chosen by merit, the honor would have been John’s. John’s quick thinking had saved them all. But Alfie wondered if the man thought he was owed something in return. Why break the silence now? “Is this some manner of metaphor?” he asked. Every muscle in Alfie’s body stood out marked in lines of pain, over a skeleton made of frost, but still there was room for a new ache, somewhere deeper than flesh. “An obligation? I stand by my words earlier. The laws of God and man are my constant companions now, you know. I won’t take it if it’s—”

“Alfie, it’s a cup of coffee.” John put down his hood, letting his white wig be powdered with snowflakes. There was color in his face now—the pink of chapped cheeks. His smile opened little wounds along his mouth where the skin had cracked in the cold. “To celebrate the fact that the water has gone down far enough for the galley fires to be lit. Drink it, or let it turn to ice, but do get the cup back to the wardroom steward afterwards. He values the set.”

Under the force of that smile, Alfie thawed. It might after all, just be a friendly gesture from a shipmate. And besides, could he really turn down a hot drink? He drank the coffee and its smoky, bitter taste was heaven on earth. Warmth bloomed in his belly, spread outwards, making his hands and feet tingle. He closed his eyes and groaned with bliss. “I’m sorry. I needed that. Am I being a cad?”

He handed back the Derby coffee-cup and saucer with their pretty sprig of roses, and brushed in passing fingertips that felt almost equally delicate. “Oh, that would be a great deal, then! I had not realized I was so monstrous.”

John laughed on a note of strain, and a heartbeat later Alfie joined him, choosing to allow him to take it as a joke. The little falsehood rang like a cracked bell between them for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then John, squinting against the flakes in his eyes, drew up his hood again. “How goes it?”

Alfie walked down the line of hitches, across the bow, to where the waterproofed sail had been passed under the keel and drawn up tight on the other side, a bandage over the great gash in the ship’s hull. “Salem Joe lost a couple of toes from swimming down to get it fixed beneath the keel, but we’ve passed a second sheet over the lower hole and we’re ready to start pumping again.”

“Good.” John motioned with his head, and Alfie followed him down into the gundeck’s squalor. Half the remaining crew hung from the deck above like bats folded in their wings. They had slung their hammocks as close together as possible, blankets and coats piled high above them. Here and there two sleepers rocked in one sling, the second hammock drawn for extra warmth about the first. The invalids and the boys, by common consent, were slung above the galley and lay steaming faintly in a stench of mold, wet lanolin, and sweat.

Though the deck, and the galley in it, lay at forty-five degrees to the horizon, the lids of the great copper cauldrons were screwed tight shut. Lumps of gristle drummed cheerfully against them as they boiled for a future meal. Salem Joe, an ancient black man whose true name no one dared try to pronounce, raised a drying head, hair white and curly as sheep’s fleece, from his pile of blankets, and nodded to Alfie as they passed.

He nodded back, picked out the six men from the starboard watch who looked most rested, and set them to the pumps. The rattle and whoosh made the rookery of sleeping men above him stir a little. But the stretching and muttering died down in seconds as exhaustion did its work. Shivering with remembered chill, Alfie hugged himself, dropping his hands guiltily as he saw John watching. They moved on to the companionway, sidling carefully from rope to pillar to line like spiders on a wall, to keep from plummeting down the inclined deck.

Alfie held tight to the table winched up by its ropes to lie snug against the underside of the deck above his head and wedged his feet into the raised lip of the stairway. John, hooking his lantern to the handle of a rammer above him, took up station beside him. Their hands lay almost touching on the same rope, their feet nudged together. At the touch, Alfie’s imagination—never entirely still where John was concerned—suggested that he could put out an arm and pull John into his side. They could wrap that big black cloak around both of them.
Just stand, touching, a layer of thin, soaked linen between the icy chill of each other’s skin. Warmth would kindle like a dropped spark, well up and flood between them. Or perhaps they could lie down, doubled up in the same hammock as the men were doing, and he could sleep, warmed through with John’s warmth….

It had been a long night. He swayed, caught himself before he fell and looked at the square of mirror-black water that drowned the stairwell.

“It
is
going down,” John murmured. Alfie smiled to himself, hearing the same soft exhaustion in John’s voice. If he offered sleep—sleep in his bed, sleep, tangled together in a warm nest of flesh and heat, like badgers curled in their sett, would John really refuse?

Their reflections hung side by side, white and weary in the surface of the water. Then it shivered and they broke into wavering ribbons. A tread showed pale beneath the surface for a moment, then emerged, dripping, just as a lower step became traceable against the dim. The process fascinated him.
If only I might empty myself of darkness so easily
.
Suck it up from the depths of me, spew it out and be rid of it. Go back to how I was when I would have died for him; when I hoped he’d want to die for me.

He looked up to study John’s face in the light of the lantern. No condemnation there now, only the weary, patient look of a man too tired to rail against his pain. But Alfie remembered it; remembered the recoil at Gibraltar. From “you’re the best man I know” to shit John would have gladly scraped from his shoe, in the time it took to comprehend a single sentence.

“Once the pumps have emptied the orlop and hold,” John said, quietly, as if he too was aware they spoke of deeper things behind their words. “I’ll organize the carpenters to concentrate on repairing the hull. I’ll also need an inventory of—“ “Supplies.”
A shy flash of a smile. “Yes, and usable storage vessels. The

livestock must be drowned and the dry stuffs ruined, but they may be used for bait. Fresh water should not be a problem so long as we have barrels to put the snow in. But if the rum is spoiled we may yet have a mutiny on board before we get home.”

John’s startled, sidelong look grazed Alfie’s face like a bird’s wing, soft and warm. Then John ducked his head in an effort to hide his pleasure. “I will,” he agreed, both of them so sure of it that the statement could scarcely be called a boast. “The
Meteor
was good practice for that.”

You ought to be a captain
. Alfie looked down, watching the water suck away down the stairs. The top of the gunroom’s scuffed table was visible now, on its side, with the pewter dishes gleaming beneath it on the floor. He lowered himself carefully down the slanted steps and fished up a floating ditty-box. Inside, amid needles and buttons, laid a lock of brown hair tied in a pink silk ribbon. At the sight he snapped the lid closed again, clutched the little thing tightly, its carved decorations of frigates digging into his fingers.

No.
The love token was a warning, an omen of what might happen if he carried on down that path. He couldn’t afford to soften toward John, to say anything that might be mistaken as encouragement. John’s damned competence! It hurt. It hurt to know that John had been more than capable of doing something for him while he lay in jail awaiting his court martial, but had not done so.
If only
… If only John could have been more like Gillingham. Then Alfie could have put his inaction down to mere weakness—human, excusable weakness.
But he was not. He could have done something to help. He chose not to.
He chose not to be involved in the sordid details of Alfie’s life.
What kind of a friend is that?

“It taught us both a great deal, I think,” he said coldly, “about who to trust, and how far. I’m thankful for the lesson.” Turning away from John’s flinch, with a mixture of triumph and shame, he made a crablike, undignified exit. “By your leave, I’ll just go above while the water recedes. I left the marines fishing the sprung foremast, and you know what they’re like, if unobserved.”

“Lt. Donwell, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” Major Pascoe of the marines nudged the fish on the deck with a fastidiously polished shoe, and smiled widely. A handsome dark haired man, with a ruddy face, his unselfconscious beam—which revealed an unquiet graveyard of rotting teeth—never ceased to be startling. “The crack runs through the whole of the lower mast, and I’m in some perplexity as to where the bandage should be applied.”

Alfie rocked back on his heels and considered the sprung mast. “Heave it up and let me see it in place,” he said, folding his arms and settling companionably into place next to the major. The marine company divided into two parts, the larger hauled on their apparatus of blocks and line, raising the fish up until it dangled against the mast. The smaller company swarmed into the rigging to guide it into place.

Like a splint for a broken leg, the fish was a shaped, hollowed piece of wood designed to be attached to a split mast to strengthen it. Undoubtedly, there were rules of mathematics involved in calculating where it should best be positioned, but Alfie didn’t know them. He watched with narrowed eyes and said, “A little up. Up. No, above that knot. Maybe a handsbreadth to starboard. Yes, there! No, stop. There!” with a kind of instinct for where
Albion
would feel least pain. When it was done, hammered into place, wedged tight and reinforced by the blacksmith with iron bands, Pascoe sent his men up to repair the rigging and offered Alfie brandy from a small, silver hip flask.

“So, Lieutenant. You think the carpenters can plug the hole before we perish of thirst? Starvation?”
“I’m sure of it, sir.” Alfie cherished the burn of the liquor down his throat and licked his lips to be sure no trace of flavor escaped him. “As soon as the men are rested and fed, I mean to send them out in the boats to fish for herring. Maybe a small whale. We’ve no lack of brine for storage. As for the water, we can carve ourselves as much as we care to take of the berg. Pack it into barrels and we’re done.”
“It’s sweet?” Pascoe clambered up to the rail, took out his pocket knife and chipped a flake of ice from the berg. He shivered dramatically as it melted in his mouth and smiled again. “Good lord! I was worrying all night long, and for no reason. You chaps make such a career of not looking concerned. I’m ashamed to say I can’t tell when it’s genuine and when it isn’t.”
Alfie laughed, touched the snow himself then licked the white line of it from his finger before it melted. The cold set his teeth on edge, but the taste burst brighter than white wine on the back of his tongue. “We must sometimes appear to be what we’re not,” he began, frowning as the double meaning sank in, “in order to keep the company together. But it’s just a show. Inside we’re as scared as the next man. Moreso, maybe, for the inability to show it.”
“I have no idea whether I should be reassured or not!” Pascoe admitted, squinting up at the men who were splicing the foremast backstay.
“Well,” Alfie shook off the clouds of half-meanings and clapped the major on the shoulder, delighted to receive a tolerant smile in return. “You may be certain that when it comes to casting off from here, our complaisance will be a little strained. Get that wrong and we could be blown back on. But, until then, with only a score of men lost, I think we have cause to be cheerful. It could have been a lot worse.”
He moved to the tangle of broken wood and limp lines where the bowsprit lay crushed. The pile of wood and pulverized ice should be sifted for both water and fuel. But he paused before giving the orders, thinking about Pascoe and what—unconsciously—the man represented. An offer to forget his past and welcome him back into polite Society. A door, held open, just a crack, through which the light of forgiveness shone.
If he pleased he could pull that door wider and go in. He could do what Farrant had tried to do—but he could do it better. Slake his body’s needs with his own right hand instead of casual encounters. Stop looking for love. After prison, and Rodney’s warning, how could he dare continue to chase that phantom any further? So far it had led him only to one precipice after another, then disappeared, leaving him to fall.
A league to larboard the watery sun peeked briefly through thinning cloud. Coming up to greet it, out beyond their strange harbor, the humped backs of five whales lifted glistening from the waves. With a great huff and hiss they breathed out fountains, and for a second the sun in the spray made pale rainbows.
They swam together, slow and graceful, keeping pace with one another, the flukes of their tails at times touching, their long square jaws occasionally bumping. Perhaps they only tried to scrape off irritating barnacles, but to Alfie those movements looked like caresses. He wondered what they were to one another.
Father, Mother, and children? Lovers and friends?
They slipped beneath the waves as the cloud drew back in, leaving the ocean grey, unbroken, empty. The outer world mirrored his inner, as light dimmed and snow fell once more. Head bowed, he went below.
Cold water dripped in a steady patter of drops from the orlop deck above and trickled down the stinking, filth-daubed bulkheads. A faint light shone through the two layers of canvas wrapped about the bow, drawing him to the hole in the hull. The greasy sails bowed inwards there, held in place against the gap by sheer pressure of water. Runnels, squeezed through the fabric, slid in the shifting light down into the ballast—it sucked marshlike beneath his feet. Flickering light, and the deep, underwater silence, made him think of the stories of Davy Jones’ locker; of the cities beneath the waves, where mermaids dragged their captive souls to live damp and fishy lives far away from human love. But then a clatter and a face leaning over the edge of the cable tier above to shout, “Ahoy down there, have you seen my hammer…oh, sorry, ’tis you, Lieutenant! Never mind, I’ll get it meself,” broke the spell.
He opened spilled barrels, found flour and suet, peas and raisins soaked into salty puddings. Behind the light wicker fences of the animal pens the captain’s cow, the two goats shared by the wardroom, and the midshipmen’s pig lay swollen and cold. By the chicken coop, a bird under his arm, his foot caught in a twist of rope, lay the corpse of one of the powder monkeys—a boy nine years old.
Alfie knelt down in the sludge of ballast, hearing footsteps suck and crunch towards him, took off the boy’s shoe and worried the soaked knot over his heel—no stockings to tear—before slipping the loose felt shoe back on.
“Samuel Jenkins,” John whispered above his head. “The bird was his pet.”
“Oh, God!” Alfie hitched a breath, covered his eyes with his hand and shuddered. The boy had come to rescue his pet and been trapped as the water rose. Tears poured scalding hot down his hand. “God,
I can’t…!”
John sighed, the exhale shaking with his own emotion, but he bent down and took the little body into his arms, carrying it up into the light. Three brothers on board ship, two sisters and a father working in the dockyard in Portsmouth.
It can’t be! It can’t be allowed.
Alfie silently wept, for Samuel Jenkins at first and then without pause or halt for Farrant. For Charles Farrant, who would— if he were here—undoubtedly say something cruel. He wept as he had not been able to weep in prison; hiding behind his hands, shivering. Emptying himself out until he felt as besmeared and tossed about as the hold.
Such a bastard, Farrant had been!
Covering up his misery with harsh words and extravagant habits. Why had it taken them all by surprise when he finally let the pain kill him?
He had probably been looking for an excuse for years
, Alfie realized.
And why was Alfie now thinking of following his example? Of forbidding himself love, of making his own life so unendurable to him that he would do nothing to save it? Death had come to the boy and the man alike, regardless of merit or sin. Was that any good reason to reject the happiness he could attain? Young Samuel, who died trying to save his friend, knew better than that. Caution was one thing, cowardice quite another.
Sniffing back his tears, he picked up the abandoned bundle of feathers and stumbled up the companionway onto the gun-deck just as the bells rang for the first dog watch. The ship rumbled with shouting and laughter as the starboard watch tried to take down their tables for dinner, while the larboard were being roused from their sleep, hopping about, half clothed.
Jenkins’ brothers knelt in an island of silence around his still form, but they took a look at Alfie’s tear-streaked face and allowed him to place the dead bird gently back in the crook of the boy’s arm. He stood up, watched them put the cannon balls by the boy’s feet, stroke back the drying curl of fringe from the cold forehead, and begin to sew him into his hammock for burial.
“Did ought to eat that chicken,” said the eldest, his hand trembling as he pushed the needle through the nose of the corpse.
“Nah. The little beggar’d only come back and haunt us.”
“I….” Alfie choked up again, and the brothers looked up at him with strange and terrible sympathy.
“D’you mind leaving us alone with him a moment, Lieutenant. T’say goodbye, like.”
“Of course. I’m sorry, I…. Of course.”