The Wreckers (6 page)

She took a breath. Her eyes seemed as round as the ponies’. “Once in a while—in a very great while—a ship would come to ruin on the rocks. And there would be food then, and wine, and huge heaps of things just waiting to be carried off and sold for pounds and pounds. And for once it was the Mawgans who suffered.”

“Because no one was left to work the mines?”

“Not only that.” Mary bunched her skirt in her fists. “By law the Mawgans had ‘right of wreck.’ We still do. Any ship that comes ashore in the great arc of St. Elmo’s Bay—anywhere between Wrinkle Head and Northground—legally
belongs to my uncle. His father had right of wreck; his grandfather did before that. The oldest man in Pendennis can remember a Mawgan standing in the ruins of a tea wreck, swatting at men who came for the chests, yelling that they were his, that it all belonged to him.”

Mary turned toward the sea. “Only rarely did ships come ashore on the Tombstones. They might wreck
there
”—she pulled a hand free and pointed to the east—“or there, or there, or there. So the people followed them. Whenever a ship was caught on the lee shore, the whole village—women and children and men—tracked it along the coast. For days they wandered with it, back and forth, back again. And they prayed, John, they knelt and prayed that the poor ship would meet its end before it got to the next village, before it met the crowd that had set out from there with their own axes and picks.”

She was staring at the gray waters of the Channel. Her voice dropped, and she shivered. “The law said that anything that came from a wreck was free for salvage. But for it to be a wreck, no one could survive—not man or beast. If one person—if so much as a dog—made it safely ashore, then it weren’t really a wreck at all. ‘The wreck edn’t dead,’ is what they’d say. So it was the law, John, that made the devil’s work of wrecking.”

“Because,” I said, “they killed the people who got to shore.”

“Yes. It came to that.” She sat again, close beside me. “But it got worse. It got much worse.”

M
ary sat on the grass, her face to the sea. Her voice grew faint and faraway, as though she talked from a different place and a different time.

“I only once saw them use the false beacons,” she said. “It was the night of a terrible storm. You could hardly stand in the wind, it was that strong. And a ship came running down toward the shore.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Seven years ago,” said she. “I was only a child.” She closed her eyes. “We lay in a row along the cliffs and watched that ship. The waves were breaking right over the decks, and we could hear the sails blowing out—
boom, boom
—one after the other. It was Caleb Stratton who said, ‘Show them a light.’ I remember him standing when everyone else was flat on the ground, standing in the rain and the wind, with that big black beard of his
like a mask on his face. ‘We done it before,’ he said. ‘Show ’em a light and they steer straight for it.’ Uncle Simon would have none of it—I remember him shouting—and most of the people felt the same way. But Caleb had a power and a strength, and there were always a few who would follow him. Stumps—he still had his legs then, though not for long—ran off to fetch a lantern. They tied it to the tail of a pony that they walked across the cliffs. I remember the way it flared in the wind, the way the men laughed. Those poor wretched sailors; they must have thought they saw the masthead of a ship going into harbor. And they followed like lambs. Right to the Tombstones.”

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“No. They sent us home, the women and children.”

“And your uncle?”

“He stayed at the cliffs.” Mary lay back and put her hand over her eyes. “The storm blew all night. And Uncle Simon came home in the morning, all bloodied and bruised, soaked with salt water. He had tried to stop them, he said. He had tried to put out the light, and they attacked him.”

“He told you this?”

“And I believed him,” said Mary. “He poured a huge glass of brandy. It shook in his hands. Then he told me how the ship drove up on the rocks and how the masts fell, sails and all. The men were standing on the clifftop, Caleb and the others, laughing and dancing like boys at a game. And Uncle—this is what he told me—followed them down
to the beach and took up an axe. And in the darkness he—” She stopped, breathing softly.

“What?” I asked.

Mary spread her fingers and peered at me between them. “That was the night Stumps lost his legs.”

Suddenly the day seemed very cold. I could imagine the scene as Mary described it, Stumps writhing on the ground as the axe rose and fell. But just as easily I could imagine a cable cinching on his legs, Simon Mawgan wielding a lantern instead of an axe.

“A lot of men drownded that night,” said Mary. “And since then my uncle’s made sure that they never again used the lights.”

“But they do,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “They don’t.”

“I saw them.” I turned to her, almost pleading. “I saw them from the ship.”

“It’s quite impossible, John. You must have seen stars, or maybe—”

“I saw the ponies on the cliff. They had lanterns on their backs.”

“Are you sure?” said Mary. “Maybe they were boxes. Maybe they were—”

“They were lanterns,” said I.

“Oh, dear.” She closed her eyes. “Uncle Simon will be very angry to hear this.”

“Angry?” I laughed. “He did it. He wrecked the
Skye
, and he wrecked others before her.”

“No!” said Mary.

“Look at his house. All those things.” I thought of my bedroom. On the wall hung a quadrant that a sailor had used to find his way from the stars. In Simon Mawgan’s house, it was a rack to hold socks.

“You judge him too harshly,” she said. “He’s not an evil man; he’s really not. He only takes what the law gives him—a payment, or a share, from the wrecks that God brings about.”

“God wrecks the ships?” I asked.

“If not Him, then who else?”

“It was men who wrecked the
Isle of Skye,”
I told her.

“And it was my uncle who saved you from it,” she said. “And edn’t that the truth? Edn’t it? If he did wreck your ship, then why did he help you?”

I had no answer for that. But still I wasn’t sure. “Where was he when it happened?”

“With Parson Tweed. He was called away to see the parson.” She sat up. “And if that won’t convince you, then I suppose nothing will.”

At that moment I believed her. How could I not? He was her uncle, and Mary seemed so sure of him, so loving. Of course I believed her.

“Now, come on,” said Mary. “We’ve a fair distance to go yet.”

“To where?” I asked.

“Why, to the Tombstones.”

We rode south, and met the road at Coffee Cove. But when it turned inland, we kept to the cliffs, and soon came to our destination.

We pressed the ponies right to the brink. It scared them to stand there. They shied away, their eyes rolling as they tossed their heads. Mary kept hers steady while mine pranced sideways and pawed at the ground.

“They never like it here,” said Mary. “They smell the fear and the dying.”

Below us, the sea looked gray and cold. In endless rows, the waves gathered themselves, towering high, then rushed at the rocks in a heaving crash of surf and spray. The water whirled among those spikes of stone, leaping up in great white spouts, blasting into sheets, flying as spindrift across the cove. There was nothing left of the poor
Isle of Skye
; it was as though the wreck had never happened. But high on the beach, where the waves reached like fingers to the cliffs, were the same heaps of rope and shattered wood. And the gulls still circled round and round.

“They always gather where there’s been a wreck,” said Mary, seeing the way I stared. “People say when a sailor drowns that his soul becomes a gull.”

It was a nice thought. I studied them, the birds turning gray, then silver, as they flashed across the sun. Could one be old Cridge, another Danny Riggins, the foretopman, free now to spin through the sky?

“I hate this cove,” said Mary. “It’s the worst place of them all.” The wind lifted her hair, and above her the gulls cried like babies. “It’s haunted, John.”

Her uncle had said the same thing, with the same little shiver in his voice.

“You can feel it, can’t you? The sadness.” With a press
of her heels, Mary let the pony move back from the edge. Mine went with it; I couldn’t stop it. “You see corpse lights here,” she said.

“Ghosts, you mean?”

“Not as you’d think of them.” She looked at me, and her eyes were as gray as the sky. “All you see are lights. Pale blue lights that move along the beach or across the cliffs. At night and in the fog. Slowly, slowly they go: like a funeral march.” Suddenly she laughed. “Oh, it makes me scared just to think of it. When people see the corpse lights, they run away.”

“Have you seen them?”

She shook her head. “Years ago—before I was born—people heard a ship come ashore. It was a full moon, and flat calm, but in the village they heard a shout—a scream—and then the smashing of a ship. They all came, the whole village, and they stood right here along the cliffs. They stood and listened to the screaming, to the crack of wood and the thunder as the masts came down. But the bay was empty, John; there was no ship.”

I looked down at the Tombstones, and I saw that the sea was changing. We watched the wind ripple across the surface, black bands that thickened and thinned as they raced toward us. Behind them, whitecaps bloomed.

“The air was deathly still,” said Mary. “The sea was flat as a field, but they could hear the roar of heavy surf. And then, for a moment, they did see a ship. It was a ghost, a pale, shimmering hull, and they could see right through it to the Tombstones and the moonlight on the water. An old man of the village—he’s been dead twenty years—said,
‘The
Virtue
! She wrecked here eleven year ago.’ ” And as they watched, the corpse lights came. They rose up from that ship that wasn’t there, and came across the water.”

Mary shivered. “The people ran away. They all turned and ran, except for one man who stayed behind. He shouted after them; he taunted them. He was going down to the beach, he said. He wasn’t scared of a few little lights. But he was never seen again, John. They say the ghost ship carried him off.”

“And the lights?” I asked.

“Uncle Simon used to tell me if I stayed out at night, the corpse lights would get me.” Mary smiled. “All children are told the same. And a month ago there was a ship embayed. She came in the night, and the men were waiting with lanterns. But they saw the corpse lights right there on the beach.”

Mary pointed down the cliff. “It was one light, moving along. Caleb Stratton was there, and Jeremy Haines, Spots, and the others. And they all ran away; Caleb tried to stop them, but he couldn’t. In the morning the ship was gone. Some people said it was never there at all. It was the
Virtue
come back, they said, and she was looking for crew. They say the corpse lights are dead men. Dead men alive.”

I looked down at the sea, and I thought of old Riggins, who’d told me stories of specters and ghost ships as the
Isle of Skye
sailed on a rolling sea. And I longed for those days, and wished I could live them again. I ached to ride a tall ship through the night, with the sails rising above me like patches over the stars. I had felt I would die if Father doomed me to work in the dusty prison of an office. I
remembered him saying—he loved to say it—“You’ll never make a seaman.” Our voyage had been a lesson, to teach me that he was right. “Too many dangers by half,” he had said, hoping to save me from the very thing that had befallen us. I looked down at the sea, and I sighed.

Mary tugged my sleeve. “Come on, John,” she said. “I’m tired of the sadness here.”

As we backed and turned the ponies, a gust rose up the cliff and tangled their manes.

“I’ll show you my garden,” said Mary. “My secret garden.”

It wasn’t far. Nestled between the cliffs and the road, it lay in a little gully hidden by a tangle of bush. There, in a patch of soil about the size of a door, Mary had planted wildflowers.

“I call it my memory garden,” she said. “For each wreck, I’ve started a plant.” She turned her head away and crouched suddenly on the ground. “It’s silly, really, edn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “It’s not.” The flowers grew in rows, twelve abreast, filling the space. A little farther down the gully, she’d cleared the ground for a new plot. The soil was broken but empty, waiting like a fresh grave.

“They grow so well here,” said Mary. “It’s a funny thing. I never water them, never weed them.” She groomed the flowers, arranging them on their stalks. “I can’t explain it. But it’s sort of like magic, don’t you think?”

She wasn’t looking at me. She stroked each flower, then touched its leaves, as though these were little people she hovered over.

She lifted her skirts and held them clear of the flowers. “There’s so many. So many flowers. And each time I plant one, I cry.” She walked on her toes between them, up to the top of the garden. “Sometimes I imagine this whole bluff”—she spread her arms, and her skirts tumbled loose—“all that you see, covered with flowers, each for a wreck.”

We made our way back to the ponies. As though by agreement, we didn’t ride them, but led them instead up toward the road.

“Sometimes I can’t bear it,” said Mary. “I can hear it from the house, the screaming.”

The wind gusted past us. I heard a distant sound of horses and leather.

“I want to stop it,” said Mary.

“You couldn’t,” I said. “It would be you against all of Pendennis.”

She shook her head. “It edn’t the whole village, John. It’s just a few of the worst. Like Caleb Stratton and Jeremy Haines. Without them, the wrecking would stop. Without them, people would come to save the sailors, and not to kill them.”

I said, “Parson Tweed told me Caleb is the leader.”

“It looks that way,” said Mary. “But I think there’s someone else, someone secret. Caleb Stratton edn’t very smart. I think he’s like a puppet, and this person works him and tells him what to do. I have to find out who he is, the puppet master.”