Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key (12 page)

The second day, however, he dispensed with his own shirt, announcing that Society might require a man to be miserable in the heat, but he was damned if he was going to sweat in the sun like a roasting ham. He burned quite painfully red as a consequence.

He took to swaggering, too.

“Well, here’s the damned salt beef,” he announced, setting down a keg he had hauled up from the beach. “I declare, gentlemen, I am developing a prodigious appetite for meat. It must be the free air; for in Spanish Town I was so dyspeptic, I could scarcely stomach dry biscuit without a glass of wormwood cordial first. I find my natural appetite wonderfully revived. Perhaps you’d be good enough to cook us a dish of stewed beef, ma’am?”

“That’s not beef,” said Sejanus. “That’s one of the powder kegs.”

“Damn your eyes, can’t you see the salt?” Mr. Tudeley pointed to the white encrustation along the staves. He grabbed up a hatchet and, before anyone could stop him, broached the keg with it. “Oh,” he said in disappointment, as the black stuff trickled out like sand. “I suppose it is gunpowder after all. Well, no matter. Perhaps now we’ll be able to shoot some of the goats.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Waverly, coming to look into the keg. She frowned. “What you took for salt is
saltpeter
, Mr. Tudeley. It has leached out in the seawater and spoilt the powder.”

“Damn,” said John, and parenthetically added “Excuse me, ma’am. Are they all like that? And there I went to all the trouble of fetching up that swivel gun.”

“It is of no consequence,” said Mrs. Waverly, looking serene. “I shall simply prepare more saltpeter.”

As one man, they stared at her. “Where’d you learn to do that?” said John.

“In my travels with my late husband,” she said, and smiled, and declined to explain further.

It turned out that if Mr. Tudeley and Sejanus took the boat out to a certain rock just offshore, that was white as snow with birdshite and hot as a griddle, and spent a hellish hour or so chipping away enough of it to fill a bucket, half the work was done. John lay back in the shade, watching them complacently.

“Will you have a little more rum, Mr. James?” Mrs. Waverly inquired, bending down to him.

“Why, yes, ma’am, that’s mighty kind of you,” said John. She presented him with a coconut-shell full and settled down by him, taking care that her thigh pressed against his own. But she sat otherwise upright and proper, with her hands folded in her lap, gazing out at Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley as they worked.

“I must commend you on your admirable restraint, Mr. James,” she said. “In all the while we have been here, you have not attempted anything in the least improper. This despite the necessity of a state of dress that would be deemed immodest in London, and the prodigious quantities of rum you have been obliged to imbibe for medicinal reasons.”

John considered her narrowly, wondering what she might be about. He had a swallow of rum and thought carefully before he replied.

“Well, ma’am, it’s not that I ain’t been tempted. You’re a beauty, by thunder; but there’s such a thing as loyalty to friends, ain’t there? You was with my shipmate Tom. He was gently born and all; why, he knew princes. And here’s me, a bricklayer’s apprentice from Hackney. I ain’t such a fool as to suppose I could supplant the likes of him.”

“Not
supplant
,” said Mrs. Waverly, with a sigh. “None shall ever replace dear Tom in my affections. But he is—oh, how can I pronounce the hated word?—dead. And you and I have been through a great deal together, Mr. James. I do hope that, when my period of mourning is concluded, you will not allow delicacy to prevent you from making so bold as to consider me more than your friend.” And she placed her hand on his leg, pretty close to Wapping Dock and Walls.

John had a stiff drink of rum while he tried to reason through the exact meaning of her words.

“Well,” he said cautiously. “We’ll see, I expect. Well! H’m. So. Was there a Mr. Waverly, then?”

“Briefly,” she said. “And then I met a gallant cavalier. Poor Tom had been improvident with his inheritance; he was therefore obliged to live by his bravery and his wits, and I with him.”

“Where’d you learn to make saltpeter, really?”

“Flanders,” Mrs. Waverly replied, with a slight shrug. “We were besieged. One made do with what one could improvise. But what of you, dear Mr. James? Had you a wife or sweetheart in London?”

“No—oo,” said John, “At least, no wife. There were girls and all. None that’ll be missing me.” He thought briefly of the girl he had lost in Panama, and winced.

“There is no claim on your heart then?” Mrs. Waverly leaned back and lay down beside him, smiling into his eyes.

“Er,” said John. “No, ma’am.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mrs. Waverly, and kissed him, slowly. She pressed him back and he yielded to her push, feeling his heart pounding. He groped to pull his shirt down in front, but her hand was somehow there in the way, and everything was going along splendidly when he raised his eyes and saw a black face laughing at him from the branches above. A young girl, very pretty, with long black ringlets trailing down and wicked mischief in her eyes. She wore a pink cotton gown. John saw her clear as he saw Mrs. Waverly, and he was seeing Mrs. Waverly close and clear indeed.

His eyes widened and he caught his breath, just as Mrs. Waverly sat up abruptly.

“Oh, dear,” she said, in tones of real irritation. “The others have returned.”

John leaned up on his elbow and saw Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley had quitted the rock and were just now stepping ashore, bearing their malodorous prize. He looked up into the branches again, but the young girl had vanished.

“How tedious,” muttered Mrs. Waverly. Yet she received the bucketful when Mr. Tudeley brought it up to camp, smiling graciously as though it contained the first strawberries of the season, and promptly carried it off to distill it with wood ash.

“And how is the brave hero?” Sejanus inquired, selecting a couple of coconuts from the pile they had gathered.

“Well enough,” said John crossly.

“Poor hero. Did we interrupt your courting?” Sejanus drew his cutlass and sliced away the top of one coconut, as easily as opening a jar. He tossed it to Mr. Tudeley, who had collapsed gasping in the shade, and opened the other for himself.

“No,” said John. “And none of your business anyhow, whatever we was doing.”

“Suit yourself,” said Sejanus. He had a long drink of coconut water.

“But that little black miss that was so taken with you at Tortuga was hanging about,” said John, with a spiteful grin as Sejanus choked.

“What do you mean?” he inquired, when he had wiped coconut water from his nose and chin.

John pointed into the tree and told him. Sejanus glanced up into the branches. His eyes narrowed.

“Nothing there now,” he said. “Nothing at all. That’s how it is with
imaginary
things. Like those old loas, back in Africa. People imagined them up, you see? But this isn’t Africa, there’s nobody to make them real here. And so they have no power here. Shadows and tricks of the light, that’s all they are. And that’s all they’ll stay.”

There came a sudden clatter of hooves on the ridge above them. To their amazement, a goat came running straight through camp. Mr. Tudeley flung himself sideways and grabbed for it, managing to catch hold of a hind leg. It fell, bleating and struggling.

“What extraordinary luck!” he gasped. “Kill it, sir, kill it!”

Before he quite knew what he was doing, Sejanus’s cutlass flashed in the air. The goat’s head flew off in a burst of blood and rolled in the sand; the blood-jet hissed in the coals of the fire. The goat continued twitching and kicking a moment longer.

“Oh, well done, sir!” said Mr. Tudeley.

“Roast goat for dinner!” said John, applauding. And neither of them could understand why Sejanus flung down the cutlass with a grimace of disgust, and stormed off to walk the beach by himself.

IT HAD BEEN A young goat, and roasted up well, with a lot of dripping that they caught carefully in a coconut shell; not for eating, but to grease up the swivel gun and the pistol. They celebrated the fresh meat with abundant rum, and grew very merry about the fire; all except Sejanus, who seemed sullen and out of sorts.

“I declare, sir,” said Mr. Tudeley, “This is most unlike you. Be of good cheer! The night is fine, the company excellent. Perhaps someone knows a diverting song or story? What of you, Mr. James? Will you not entertain us with some sort of sailor lore?”

John looked up, blinking sleepily. He had taken on board as much supper as he could hold, and would have liked nothing better than to nod off there by the fire. But he sat upright and rubbed his whiskery chin.

“Well,” he said. “Sailor lore. Don’t know any sailor lore, to speak of. But I know a story, I guess.

“There was this boy named Dick, see. And he was real poor. Youngest of three and his oldest brother got the farm and his sister got the money laid by to be her dowry, and so all that was left to him when the will was read was the cat.

“So he has to go out into the world to seek his fortune. And the cat says, ‘What are you looking so downcast for?’

“And Dick’s surprised and all, because a cat can’t talk, can it? So he says to the cat, he says, ‘I didn’t know you could talk, Puss.’ And Puss says, ‘Ah, well, I can do a lot more than talk. I’m a lucky cat, I am. Just you make me a nice pair of boots to wear, and a gentleman’s hat, and make sure I always have enough cream and fish for my dinner, and I’ll fetch you anything you want.’ ”

“And the fool gave him the boots and hat, didn’t he?” said Sejanus.

“Aye,” said John. “So, the cat eats the fish, and drinks up the cream, and puts on the hat and boots, and stands up like a little man. ‘Come on, master,’ he says, ‘The first thing we got to do is find a ship.’ So they go somewhere, Portsmouth or Bristol or Dover maybe, and they ship out on a vessel bound for Araby. And pretty soon the other sailors is jealous, because Dick’s got this talking cat, see? And they start to talk amongst themselves about how it ain’t natural, and they ought to pitch both Dick and the cat overboard on account of Dick being a wizard.

“But the cat gets to hear about it, on account of he’s always sneaking about as cats do, and he goes and digs out this almanac he pinched from a bookseller’s stall afore they left land, and he reads up on the weather that’s to come, and next day he stands in the waist of the ship and starts to prophesy how the weather’s going to be. Captain hears him from the quarterdeck and says, ‘What the hell are you?’

“The cat jumps up on the quarterdeck and doffs his hat all respectful and says, ‘If you please, sir, I’m a lucky weather-predicting cat, and I belong to Dick Whittington.’ Captain likes cats, and he thinks it’s real pretty the cat’s got on a little hat and boots. ‘Well, ain’t you the sweety-weetiest thing!’ quoth he. ‘You shall be my own cat now, and predict the weather for me, and that way I’ll always have smooth sailing.’

“But Puss says, ‘Oh, no, dear Captain, I’m a loyal cat, and I couldn’t possibly leave my own dear master Dick unless you was to give him your golden sword and your big pistol, and your plumy hat besides.’ So the captain grumbles a bit but he gives Dick his golden sword and his big pistol and his plumy hat, see?

“And then Puss goes to live in the Captain’s cabin and gets the best fish on a golden plate, and sleeps on a goosedown cushion, and never has to turn out in foul weather like the poor sailors do.”

“Typical,” said Sejanus.

“I expect Dick felt himself ill-used,” said Mrs. Waverly.

“Well, you have to wait and see how it turns out,” said John. “See, all the while the cat’s living in the captain’s cabin, he’s studying on the captain’s charts. And at night he creeps down into the ship and steals stores, and wraps them up in canvas and hides ’em in the boat. Then he goes into Dick’s sea chest, and he takes out the golden sword and the big pistol and the plumy hat and he hides them in the boat too. Pretty soon he’s ready, and he says, ‘Captain dear, I have a secret to tell you. There’s an island of pure gold not far away, and I can take you there; but you’ll have to let me do the steering, because only I know the course.’

“Captain says, ‘Why then, you take the tiller, Puss; just you get us there as fast as you can!’

“So Puss takes the tiller, and stays there all day and into the dark of night. And just as the moon sets, he runs them hard on a rock, and in the shock and the crash he jumps up and blows all the lamps out. So when everyone comes running up on deck it’s black as pitch, and no man knows what’s what.

“But Puss can see in the dark, you know, and he jumps on Dick’s shoulder and says ‘Now, master, just you get into the boat and cast off sharp.’ Which Dick does. Puss bends to the oars and rows them away quick from the wreck, which has been holed pretty bad, and the men work like devils to get her off the rock at high tide, but when she works free, it turns out the hole’s bigger than it looked; she fills and goes down with all hands.”

“What a dreadful little creature!” said Mr. Tudeley.

“It’s a
cat
,” said John. “What d’you expect? So then, Puss rows them up on the shore, where there’s a big heathen city. And Puss says, ‘Quick now, bind on the golden sword, and stick the big pistol in your belt, and put the plumy hat on your head.” So Dick does, and then the heathen folk all come out of their palaces to stare at Dick and his cat. And Puss talks to them, because he can talk their yowly foreign talk, and what he tells them is, his master’s the King of England, who’s been in a shipwreck and landed on their shores.

“Well, they ain’t never seen the like, neither of Dick nor his cat, so they take him to the Grand Turk. And on the way to the Grand Turk’s palace Puss is looking all around, because there’s rats running in and out of the shops, and there’s rats in the eating-houses stealing food off peoples’ plates, and rats buggering the dogs, who are yipping and whining but daren’t bite them.”

“Mr. James!”

“I mean—I mean—hoping you’ll excuse me, ma’am. Strike that last bit. So anyhow they go to the Grand Turk. The Grand Turk, he says, ‘By the powers, what’re you?’ And Puss falls down flat and knocks his head on the Grand Turk’s shoe three times, and says, ‘Oh Grand Turk, may I introduce my master, the King of England? Hoping you’ll treat a fellow prince friendly-like, as his great grand ship with golden masts and silver spars and silken sails was most unfortunate lost at sea, and only we two escaped. He’d like to know if you can loan him the borrow of a ship to get home.’