Easton's Gold Page 14

  At first Fleet thinks it’s a joke and almost smiles. But the faces looking down at him are grim.

  Fleet gets up and walks between them and into the corridor. He feels nothing but a numbness about his ears. I couldn’t have done it. But then again, what could I not have done during such a dream? And what did my mother’s words mean? “What you cannot do while you are awake, I will help you perform when you are asleep.” It’s too great a coincidence.

  Fleet emerges into the blinding sunlight of the deck. The breeze ruffles everyone’s hair as they stand. Gabrielle emerges from the throng by the deck rail, takes Fleet’s arm and draws him into the crowd. To his light-deprived eyes, her skin is like shining gold, her black hair a rainbow of reflecting colours. He totters dizzily as she guides his arm toward a rail.

  A galloping vibration overtakes the ship’s hull as the crew begins climbing over the deck rail and scaling down rope ladders. Fleet peers over to see fishing boats and punts waiting beneath. He tries to look over to the settlement that awaits them, but he has to flinch from the sunlight on the water and gets only a brief impression of wooden shacks, long storehouses, and two or three stone buildings. This must be Havre de Grace, he thinks. He came here with his father many years ago to sell fish and get supplies. It seemed a mighty city to him then. Now it is like a toy village.

  An official motions everyone else to climb down the rope ladders. Gabrielle edges in closer to Fleet as they move along the rail.

  “They’re going to search the ship,” she whispers in his ear.

  Gabrielle goes over first, with a worried backwards glance. Fleet follows, putting his leg over the side and gripping the rough rope. With his back to the sun, everything goes unnaturally dark. His eyes still sting from the light.

  Fleet imagines the searchers finding his mother’s skull, and the thought makes him feel sick. They will joke and perhaps throw it about the cabin. Then they will find the gold in the snail barrel too. Will it make him seem all the more guilty when it comes to Easton’s murder? As they search the panels and find his hidden gold, they will assume this is the cause of his murder.

  His feet touch down upon the swaying punt, and he catches Gabrielle’s worried gaze again. Now it hits him. It is neither the skull nor Easton’s gold he should be concerned about. The former captain’s corpse barrelled in his cabin is the one detail that puts the rope around his neck.

  Gabrielle lays her hand on Fleet’s arm, and they both crouch down in the punt.

  “What will we do?” she whispers.

  Fleet shakes his head.

  Noises echo through the planks beneath them as more passengers—Jacques, Jutes, and Sykes, the bursar—land on the punt and struggle to get seated. A couple of settlers take hold of the oars and push off from the ship straightaway. They row quickly toward the pier, the punt low in the water. Fleet turns and looks back at the ship. It seems deserted now, save for a solitary watchman who stands, hands behind his back, like a sullen, misplaced figurehead.

  Gabrielle stares at Fleet all the way, her eyes urgent and appealing, but Fleet merely gazes back at her. Any expression other than blankness would be utterly futile. I have been playing at being free all these years, and now the game is over.

  A good-size fishing boat ties up to the pier ahead of them. It is loaded mainly with crewmen from the ship, but Maria is there too, her handkerchief in her face. Fleet’s punt steers toward the other side of the pier, and the two settlers stand to make their landing. One throws a rope, the other leans over and holds onto a post.

  Gabrielle whispers urgently to Fleet, “They will find Henley.”

  Fleet only nods and gives a faint sigh. Why waste energy on a sigh? His throat is constricted, and he finds it hard to swallow—a premonition, perhaps. He hears the creaking of wood and the stretching of rope as the punt pulls firmly to the pier. He wonders how long he will have to wait before he hears that sound again.

  Fleet and Gabrielle both stand. People climb from the punt onto the pier, where they join those from the larger boat. Fleet holds back for a few moments.

  “I am lost,” he says, as Gabrielle tries to lead him from the punt.

  She turns and looks at him quite crossly for a moment.

  “Don’t play the criminal,” she whispers, glancing around to make sure there is no one to hear. “Don’t make me ashamed of you.”

  She tugs him by the sleeve once more, then she turns and climbs onto the wharf.

  Fleet follows.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The interrogation is chaotic, like a battle in which no one resolves to charge, yet no one holds their ranks. Crew and servants stand in a large clump, officials and settlers guarding. Sometimes a guard will come and push someone back in the group who has been adjudged to be straying. Confused shouting breaks out now and then between officials. A crow sits silent on a nearby storehouse. Another joins him, and they both silently watch.

  Gabrielle squeezes Fleet’s wrist. They are in the middle of the forty or more suspects. Fleet looks down at her and nods. At last he is coming alive. At least he may fight for his innocence.

  She doesn’t know why she is so sure Fleet did not kill the Marquis, especially after all his talk of revenge. But he seems too dazed for a murderer. In any case, they know each other too well for such a revelation not to pass from one to another just as a fire passes from tree to tree during a drought. And there is Jute. Jute’s wish for revenge is fresher and less complex than that of Fleet. There is no father-son bond between Jute and the Marquis.

  She knows that even if Fleet is innocent of the Marquis’s death and can prove it, it is Henley’s body they must explain once the ship is searched. She is working furiously to find some evasion that could possibly satisfy the authorities. Nothing comes, except a desperate hope Henley will not be found.

  After much barking and pushing, it emerges that the man in charge is a wiry, sharp-eyed official who stomps about grumbling orders of no specific purpose to the guards.

  “Keep…come on, keep them all together. That man put him over there.” As the crowd become more restless, he changes tack and shouts questions at the captives.

  “Who among you had access to the armoury?” he asks no one in particular.

  There is a shuffling of feet on the stones. Why doesn’t the fool at least take us inside? Gabrielle shivers. It is not warm despite the sun, and a crowd of curious women and men is beginning to gather some way off. They stand still and attentive, reluctant to even talk among themselves in case they miss something.

  “I have access, sir,” Sykes mumbles after quite a pause.

  “Who? Who said that?” says the interrogator, darting from person to person as though suspecting a trick.

  “I, sir, the bursar.”

  He swoops upon the bursar and draws very close to him.

  “Indeed, sir? Then you have much to answer for when the governor comes back.”

  “So did I have access, sir,” says the first mate standing near them.

  The sharp-eyed man goes to the first mate.

  “And who else?”

  “No one else,” replies the first mate. “But you forget the crime was committed with a knife. A galley knife, if sharp enough, would have been enough to pierce through the Marquis’s back.”

  “Well, who had access to the galley?” says the interrogator, losing patience.

  Jute speaks up. “The cook and myself, sir,” he says.

  The interrogator’s eyes widen, and he tramps over to Jute.

  “He was with me all night,” says Jacques.

  The interrogator halts in his tracks, and everyone turns to Jacques.

  But a call from the ship’s watch stops everything.

  “Send a boat! We’re on fire!” the watch calls.

  There is a general gasp as everyone turns to the ship. A great plume of dark smoke rises from the cabins. The watch waves his arms frantically. The interrogator signals some of the settlers by the wharf. Two men run down the pier, one unti
es the rope, the other jumps in the punt and readies an oar.

  The rest of the guards stream down to the wharf as the two men begin pushing the punt toward the great burning ship. Soon another boat pushes off from the wharf as the suspects stand mainly in silence, pressing in close to one another. The interrogator himself now deserts, striding down to the wharf, gesticulating and shouting instructions as the first boat draws near to the ship.

  The smoke plume rises like a devil’s breath high into the blue sky. Tiny flames now lick through portholes. The watch shouts and points as another man emerges from a smoking cabin, staggering under a great weight.

  Gabrielle’s heart sinks in her chest like a stone. It’s a body the man is carrying. They must have found Captain Henley! Why couldn’t the flames have prevented them?

  The watch runs to help the burdened man, and both now carry the smoking body to the deck rail. The men in the boat exchange yells with the watch, and one of the rowers climbs the rope ladder. The flames lick higher from the porthole windows as the two men lift up the body and place it neatly over the shoulders of the climber. It’s not Henley, Gabrielle realizes. It’s a woman.

  Gabrielle grabs hold of Fleet’s arm. Saved! He’s saved! Saved at least from one murder charge.

  Fleet makes a quiet moaning sound. Gabrielle’s hand drops down from Fleet’s cuff to his fingers. She squeezes, and he returns the pressure. He must understand what it means. They’ll never find Henley in his cabin, and they can’t prove he killed the Marquis either.

  The rower climbs slowly down the rope ladder with his burden. The man in the punt helps him down with the body, and the other two men begin climbing down. The second rescue boat stands some distance off, unneeded.

  “We’re stuck here now,” says a man in the crowd, as they watch the billowing smoke divide into two separate plumes. Gabrielle realizes he’s right. For good or ill, the landscape around her, with its bald rocks rising from fir trees and brush, and its mysterious coves and inlets, may well end up her home. Fleet’s gold will be consumed in the leaping flames. There is no easy way back to England or France.

  Gabrielle cannot make out the features of the woman in the boat, and she has been too excited about what it will mean for Fleet to care much about it. Only as the rescuers draw close to the wharf does it occur to her that it is unlikely to be a stowaway and that among the three women she knows to have been aboard the ship, there is only one unaccounted for.

  As she strains to make out the woman’s identity, there is a sudden shriek from among the captives. Gabrielle spins around.

  “It’s Philippa!” cries Maria with her hands on her head. Suddenly, Maria takes flight like a fox from the chase, pushing through the crowd and running down to the wharf.

  “Stop her!” cries the interrogator. But Maria dodges past a settler who tries to block her path and runs down the wharf to where the rescuers now lay out her friend’s body.

  Without thinking, Gabrielle does the same, weaving through the crowd and running down to the wharf.

  “Stop her!” cries the interrogator again, but this time no one tries.

  Smoke still rises from Philippa’s dress, and there is a smell of charred fabric and flesh.

  “She says she killed him,” says one of the rescuers looking up from the body and addressing the interrogator. “She stayed to burn the evidence. She said there were blood spots on her blanket where she kept the knife.” He stands up and backs away from the body, shaking his head. “She didn’t know the fire would spread all over the ship.”

  The other rescuer also stands and straightens himself. Maria kneels down behind Philippa and lays her hands on her head. Gabrielle kneels down also, a couple of feet away. She feels like an imposter, afraid Maria will tell her leave. But Maria just gazes down at her friend and very gently strokes her hair, which is drenched in sweat.

  “Why?” whispers Gabrielle.

  Philippa’s eyes are open but unseeing. At first she seems dead. “I knew what he was doing to you,” she says gently. “I knew he was selling you to the apothecary for his medicine.”

  Gabrielle gasps.

  “No,” she says leaning forward.

  “Now you are free,” Philippa whispers.

  Gabrielle senses Fleet behind her and turns her head.

  “What can be done?” she asks him, looking up.

  “I’ll soak a blanket in water and wrap it around her.”

  Fleet leaves quickly, and Gabrielle turns back to Philippa, who smiles, lost in some dream. Maria strokes Philippa’s hair once more, and when her friend’s expression doesn’t change, she runs her fingers down her forehead and carefully closes her eyes.

  A mast cracks and falls with a noise both mighty and desperate—the thunder of a dying world. Golden tongues of flame leap higher, and the sulphurous stench of burning fills the air.

  __________

  SUNSET KISSES THE HARBOUR waters, and Fleet weighs the stone carefully before throwing. It lands with a splash, breaking up a pool of gold. Ripples expand like rings of fire. He picks up another stone.

  “Do you think we’ll stay here?” asks Gabrielle with a sigh.

  “There’ll be work in St. John’s,” he replies, but he’s thinking of more than that. He needs his treatments and has found few snails here. His skin feels restless and itchy. He is worried about its natural hues returning. There is another reason he wants to move; something a settler mentioned three days ago. There is a black man—an African—in St. John’s who has lived in Newfoundland all his life.

  Fleet pictures his mother once more cupping water in her hand. He can see her letting it fall onto his brother’s head and trickle over his brown skin.

  Fleet throws the other stone, and the water splashes upward, catching the sun.

  “What’s the real reason you want to go to St. John’s?” asks Gabrielle, nudging him with her shoulder.

  “I haven’t slept since the story of the black man.”

  “We can go there and see.”

  “I was a fool not to think of it years ago. Mother and me taken; father killed. Why would they kill another black boy when they could take him as they took me?”

  “He must have been hiding somewhere,” says Gabrielle quietly.

  “Must have been,” Fleet says and picks up another stone. “Do you think we can make a life here—in Newfoundland, I mean?”

  “Can we make a life anywhere?” Gabrielle says, laughing. “At least it’s new. No chains, so far, for you. No stones, so far, for me.”

  Fleet looks out to the mouth of the harbour and the islands beyond, where the burning ship drifted after the anchor chain broke away. Sunset glistens over the wavelets.

  “Are you thinking of your gold again?” says Gabrielle, putting her head on his shoulder.

  “Why not?” Fleet sighs. “Why should we start from nothing?”

  “Well,” says Gabrielle, picking up something, “when mankind invents a device in which people can dive far below the waves and not drown, we’ll get your gold back for you.”

  Gabrielle throws a couple of small pebbles into the water.

  “It might wash up somewhere,” Fleet says.

  “Well, a lot might wash up somewhere,” says Gabrielle with a sigh. “Trouble is, we may not want it to.”

  Fleet gives a mild, rueful smile and nods.

  “But just look around you,” Gabrielle continues. “This place is empty. Untouched by gold. Untouched by prejudice.”

  “Yes,” Fleet sighs, “we can be anything here.”

  But his heart is suddenly wrenched by the image of his mother’s skull on the bottom of the ocean. He sees it through a haze of whirling sand and tiny fishes, surrounded by the ship’s charred timbers and Easton’s strongboxes. The loss draws him toward the story of the black man in St. John’s. He’s still afraid of his colour returning. Yet his fear is softened by a new hope. His natural hues might reunite him with all he has lost. And living skin might be more comfort than a hidden skull.


  No more treatments. The phrase comes to him in a whisper. Fleet feels the weight of many years suddenly lift from his shoulders and drop like broken shackles from his wrists. Gabrielle nestles in closer.

  Fleet picks up another stone and skims it across the water. The quickening breeze scatters the ripples, weaving its own mysterious patterns as the sun slips further behind the opposite hill.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

  I would like to thank publisher Garry Cranford for encouraging me to write this book, Laura Cameron for her editing professionalism, and everyone at Cashin Ave—Jerry Cranford, Margo Cranford, Brian Power and Bob Woodworth—for contributing to the writer-friendly atmosphere at Flanker. I would like to show my appreciation to the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the City of St. John’s. Thanks to Libby Creelman, Leo Furey, Paul Rowe, and also the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador (WANL) for being a perpetual support to the writers of this province. Special thanks are due to my wife, Maura Hanrahan, for her unceasing support and wisdom.

  PAUL BUTLER is the author of the novels Easton (Flanker Press, 2004), Stoker’s Shadow (Flanker Press, 2003), which was shortlisted for the 2004 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards, and The Surrogate Spirit (Jesperson Publishing, 2000). Butler has written for many publications in Canada, including The Globe and Mail, The Beaver, Books in Canada, Atlantic Books Today, and Canadian Geographic. He has a regular film column with The Social Edge e-zine and has contributed to CBC Radio regional and national. A graduate of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre in Toronto and a winner in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters competition (2003 and 2004), Butler lives in St. John’s.