Parrot and Olivier in America (27 page)

When we next came out for air I was afraid, not only of the sea but of that boiling black poisonous swarm, those
Australians
, in the nest beneath my feet. On that chill clear day they were kept below for their own safety, but I could hear the dreadful screams and shouts that went up every time the water came across the foredeck. I could not imagine who they were, except the poor creatures were in terror of being drowned.

Up on the deck, I wrapped my rabbit skin violently around me, fur in, crinkly side out. The seas rushed hugely by, sending fountains of spray to slap my face.

I held hard on to the lifeline and pressed against Monsieur.

Dr. Bingham and the reverend were close beside us. The captain was seated on a large coil of rope, once more fiddling with his pipe.

There was a Mr. Pillock, a new hand, at the wheel, and just at the moment when an unusually big wave overtook us, he allowed the vessel to broach to. In a moment the weight of all the sea, tons of it, fell upon me. It knocked the air out of me. I was drowned already, broken like a chicken wing, dragged and spun toward my death, and in the midst of that spinning sting I saw the reverend slide down the tilted deck beside me, and then Monsieur tackled the clergyman, and the coil of rope on which the captain had been sitting was washed overboard and snaked upon the sea.

I scrabbled at the deck. I saw the Marquis de Tilbot swing his strong single arm around the reverend's neck. We slid down the deck together, toward the ocean. I saw the Frenchman give the clergyman a twist, a flick like a big fish might give with its tail. As I skidded down toward my death, I stuck my bony knees into the bulwarks. I was scraped from toe to knee. At that moment I thought the Reverend Potter was also still alive.

IV

THE CAPTAIN KNEELED over the sodden body of the clergyman.

"Poor devil broke his neck."

Monsieur held me. He poofed his lips at me. What did he mean? I was shivering, bleeding on his shirt. Was it because I said
sucre
he killed the chaplain? I felt the great hard sealy mass of him, his wet cold nose against my neck.

"Mon petit,"
he whispered, in my secret English ear, in the lethal language, in the awful stinging sea.

By afternoon bright snakes of light were waving across the wardroom and my leg was bandaged and my chest was bare and I watched Mrs. Bingham sew a mourning band onto my shirt.

At evening the chains scraped the deck like thunder and I watched the dreadful convicts marched seven times around the deck. A boy waved to me. I pretended not to see.

Next day, the day of poor Potter's burial, was the finest we had had since leaving Plymouth, a cloudless sky mirrored in the great ocean that lay beneath it like a sheet of glass. It was very cold. From the poop I saw some large fish alongside. The horror of that meal.

At the hour allotted for the ceremony, I returned to the poop deck with Mrs. Bingham. Monsieur followed and stood behind. I could smell his sticky perfume as I waited for the convicts to be brought on deck. The Frenchman sighed. The hatchway was stoutly framed so the exposed woodwork was covered with broad-headed nails, so close together they made a sheet of steel and the structure was proof against being cut. Through this armored throat the prisoners now came onto the deck, the men's heads blue and shaven, carrying with them that smell which, Mrs. Bingham said, was their own fault as they would not holystone their decks as the doctor wished. They insisted on scrubbing them with seawater and as a result the whole of their deck had a sour stink like rags left in a bucket, sweat and pee and darkness.

They wore blue-and-white neckerchiefs, gray stockings barred with red stripes, and they were all in chains. Later most of the prisoners would have their shackles removed, but on the day of Mr. Potter's burial the most fortunate were still chained on one side. I could taste the rust and steel of Australia inside my mouth.

At length the ship's bell began to toll in the solemn tones of a funeral knell, and the captain placed himself in the midst of all his captives. Twenty marines and their pricking bayonets made a wall around their backs.

Then two hard-faced bearded sailors emerged from a hatchway, followed by two more, with heads uncovered, bearing between them a long bumpy parcel tied up in a piece of sailcloth, with a great weight fastened to the feet.

Monsieur put his hand upon my shoulder and I realized what the parcel was.

The bell tolled. The sailors marched in time, carrying the Reverend Potter round the ship till they came to the crowded quarterdeck, where a board was already laid to receive him.

Looking down on the captain's bared head I could see his naked scalp, fine hair lifting in the breeze.

"The Reverend Mr. Potter had no family," he began.

No sign of land, not even cloud to be mistaken for it.

"The Reverend Potter left a letter to a friend we know of only as Timothy. Let this be our lesson."

There was a rattling of chains and a moan of misery, which I took to be caused by their condition, not the burial. I looked at Monsieur and was suddenly enraged to see his cheeks were wet with tears.

"He writes this to Timothy: You would have been much interested to see my schools in full working order."

The smell was strong, even on the poop, a great stinking cloud of cheese.

"He writes," the captain said, "I appointed teachers from among the best-educated prisoners, each one with his class ranged round him in the form of a semicircle, in each of which were some old and gray-headed men, striving earnestly to read and to write."

The captain glared as if it was their fault he died.

"Did any of ye ever think he went back to his cabin and thought about your souls?"

He had a poor woman kneeling, crying. She was not young. It must have hurt to kneel.

"Listen," he cried, his finger now running down the page, as if impatient with them all. "Here," he cried, "here's this--Some of the convicts were reported to me as kneeling down to offer their private devotions before they retired to rest; and others used to assemble the young convicts to hear them say their prayers and the Evening Hymn."

By now there was general weeping, and the chains would not be quiet.

"He is dead," cried the captain. "He is gone from us."

The captain said, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? With the full hope of a glorious resurrection, we commit this body to the deep."

The two sailors raised one end of the board and the Reverend Potter shot down into the dark sea with a splash that struck my soul with horror. Then nothing was to be seen but a slight ripple on the face of the eternal waters.

I stood shivering while orders were given to the gray striped prisoners. The boatswain piped for wind, which slowly arose, filling the sails, and the
Samarand
turned again toward Botany Bay.

Monsieur then took me into the ward and pointed down into the sea, where there was a large dark fish clearly following behind. I held his neck and kissed his vile cheek. That's the Parrot for you. I wish he was another way.

V

I HAD SLEPT ON RAW LAND, mud, and gravel, suffered bruising hail, been frightened of ghosts and glowworms, crawled in the musty tunnels to Mr. Watkins' hole, but now, sitting at the captain's table after Mr. Potter's murder, this was the worst.

There were waving weeds and rocks beneath us, fish with awful shapes and drooping noses, and the
Samarand
pushed through them, a creature bigger than a whale with weeping creatures in its belly. The seamen had whitewashed the smoky ceilings of the ward, and that dear homely smell carried the vividness of thatch and lumpy walls and stew given from the goodness of a stranger's heart. But that was all there was of comfort, and the salt air had turned from cold to warm in the passing of a life, an afternoon.

The Frenchman was sweaty and massive as a cattle thief, one of those hard wind-burned valley men who rule their herds with the power of life and death. Also at the table were the captain and the major and the quartermaster, all dressed for the service of the king, the palace, all the empire held in their golden buttons, lions and crowns.

Yet it was the hare-lipped doctor and his meek hen wife, the Binghams, who had suddenly taken possession of the table. Yesterday they had been two small bright-eyed birds, a plump smooth thrush, a long-necked egret, now death had nourished them. The loss of the reverend had diminished everyone, but the Binghams somehow shone. The young wife--luminous in the bleeding blackness of her mourning--now told the captain it was her Christian duty to be a schoolmistress in the dead man's place.

His cold and awful silence could not dull her small brown eyes one whit.

And it was the eyes that marked them both, the Binghams, their hidden wills, their completely unexpected certainty. Remember, I knew that doctor's eyes and never thought them threatening or strange. But now I witnessed how he riveted his attention onto the murderer. I thought,
He knows
.

And then I thought,
They all know
. The captain knows. The captain already knows he is a Frenchman. Does the purser know? The major? I thought, They are playing with their stew, waiting for Rio de Janeiro, and then they will arrest him and put him in a ship in chains.

And who, I thought, will love me?

The doctor had strange long thin fingers and now he reached them out to touch Monsieur's sleeve. It was a peculiar action, inquiring, curious. Monsieur placed his spoon slowly on the table and gave full attention to the doctor's stare.

Bingham turned on me. "Your father understands me perfectly. Is not that so?"

"I don't know, sir. I could not say."

Your father
now grinned at Dr. Bingham, if that is what you call a naked baring of the teeth. He opened his mouth, he leaned across the table, he pointed inside, he made a moan, as if nakedly mocking his own impersonation of a mute, as if to say I could recite all Shakespeare to you but will not because you are a timid fool.

At the time I could not understand why he should take so ridiculous a risk, but when I was older I knew Marie-Jean de Villiers,
ecuyer
, Marquis de Tilbot, was one of those fighters who are never happy unless they are in some kind of hazard.

The captain had taken his bribe and kept his silence, but now sighed as if he was being pushed a pound too far. He toyed with his food, the poor gray beef clinging to its twig of bone.

"Come on, old fellow," he said to Monsieur, "give it straight. Now, are you ashore at Rio?"

Monsieur cocked his head at the captain, as if he were a clever dog, but if this was a joke, the captain would not share it. He turned to the major and the quartermaster and announced that he was not inclined to sail without a clergyman but that he doubted the streets of Rio would be packed with Anglicans. I saw he looked to Mrs. Bingham as he spoke. But it was her husband he commanded. "Doctor," he said, pushing his chair back, "a word on deck."

I thought: He will arrest the Frenchman.

Monsieur clearly did not think so. He reached for the brandy bottle and filled his cup. It was I who witnessed the result of the captain's negotiation with Dr. Bingham, and knew that his wife had been granted her wish to be a schoolteacher. I saw Mrs. Bingham marched through that dreadful hatch in the company of ten marines.

It was December. I should have been with my father roasting rabbit or perched up on the bar of some snug little house where I could draw an eagle for a penny. I retreated to the cabin and found the one-armed creature, battle-scarred, shirtless, wound tight as a post office clock. Finger to lips. Hands patting the air. I must shut the door. I must climb up on the bunk. Here, look, a length of timber he must have stolen. He jammed it under the handle of the door. So I was locked inside.

Then that awful smile, that missing tooth.

He reached his long arm to my hammock and dragged down my rabbit rug. From beneath the mattress he took a steel-shanked awl.

He planned to stab the doctor now, so I thought.

He whispered to me, "Rio."

So we would do a bunk. I let him know I understood. I had the stone in my pocket with his portrait on it. It was my only gift, my only wealth, my only thing to give. He took my rabbit-skin rug and held it this way and that, as if I were a bull to fight. Then he was a magician. He sat cross-legged at the head of his bunk, demonstrating how the awl could unstitch a doubled pelt inside which, snug as a wallet, was a sheaf of Piggott's five-pound notes.

"Pour moi,"
he whispered, and slipped the money down inside his pants. This trick he repeated three more times and when he was done, he took my hand and made me carefully feel the rug. Rabbit skins, as I am sure you know, are crinkly by nature, but now he led me to a place where the pelts were doubled and the crinkly feel must be accounted for by more than rough-cured skin.

"Pour toi,"
he whispered in my ear. "For you."

He was holding my shoulders and looking at me very fond and I suddenly knew that he was about to run away and leave me.

In anguish, I produced my treasure and thrust it in his hand.

He accepted it with perfect understanding, so I thought. He held me up and looked at me as if I were a fish he had just caught.

"Very fine," he said. He pursed his lips to make me quiet and then he brought my ear to his mouth. "I come back,
comprenez
. I return."

I looked into his pale spy's eyes, strangely moist and filled with all the light the porthole would allow.

Two days later I would stand at that same porthole and watch the bumboat as it set off for shore with Monsieur and Dr. Bingham both aboard. They toiled toward Sugar Loaf; then, at a certain point, the sailors raised their oars, and the boat was swept back to the left and the Marquis de Tilbot was gone.

"I come back. I promise." But who could trust his tears?

Olivier