Easton Read online

  “Fie, sir!” says Pym. He is almost steaming with anger now, his head red as a cherry. “How can such a fiendish barbarity be anything but an insult to the dead?”

  The slave circles the table with the milk jug, not looking at anyone’s face. Her eyelashes flicker. George finds himself blushing.

  Easton is silent until the girl withdraws to the side table. Then he continues. “Doorways have the most profound significance in their belief,” he explains in a low voice, his lips tightening. “Especially the doorway that leads to the dead one’s most recent habitation. This portal, or opening, becomes crucial for the departing spirit.”

  Pym makes a scoffing noise. Easton smiles sadly, but doesn’t continue for the moment.

  George looks over to the slave who stands side on to him, rearranging dishes. Her hand touches her black skirt in a delicate, embarrassed gesture. He tries to imagine such a creature carrying out the gruesome ritual with the head and finds it incredible. The only explanation that makes sense is the one that Easton is providing, that the apparently savage act hides extraordinary sensitivity of purpose. The slave doesn’t know she is being watched, it’s clear. Her eyes are still cast down, and her long lashes quiver.

  Easton has allowed the silence to do its work. Each hushed moment adds both drama and credibility to his explanations. “Another belief,” he continues at last in a soft voice, “is the potency of the head as a means of directing the spirit in its journey to the life beyond.”

  “Even if these are the reasons, sir,” Pym challenges, “what have such savage rituals to do with this good Christian boy?”

  “My dear sir,” says Easton leaning back in his chair, some hint of his old arrogance returning, “our own glorious religion has undergone many centuries of change. I’ll ask you to remember it was not so long ago when our bishops would burn a man for not believing that wine could be turned into the Blood of Christ.”

  A deathly silence now overcomes the table. A slow smile comes across Easton’s face. “Religion has become diluted and compromised, its vitality has drained away. We can barely even talk on the subject without fear of the accusation of heresy. The African rituals are rich and vibrant and have lost none of their violent beauty. We can all learn from them.”

  “Is there no end to your horrors?” Pym gasps.

  Easton merely bows sadly. The admiral interposes.

  “Captain Easton, I must insist we give Lieutenant Baxter a Christian burial at sea using the text of King James’ Prayer Book.”

  “Of course, sir. You have misunderstood me.” Easton’s brow is knotted, a picture of troubled hospitality once more. “I am a simple man of faith. I look to my glorious Church for instruction in these matters. The rituals to which I refer were carried out by simple, good-hearted women. I was explaining but not justifying their actions.”

  Easton nods again. A sense of relief comes over the room.

  The burial takes place just before dusk as the clouds burn crimson around the edges. The waves glitter like leaves of gold, waiting to carry their parcel to the underworld. Easton presides. The lieutenant’s body is wrapped tightly in the St. George’s Cross, and Easton’s crew—perhaps fifty of them on the deck—stand silent and respectful. Somehow the head has been bound or tied to the body so that the whole falls into the glistening waters with no sign that dismemberment has ever taken place. Tiny bubbles fizzle up to the surface and the night draws on with a single gasp of the breeze.

  Pym takes his leave from Easton with polite solemnity. The Loyal Pandora, now drawn alongside, receives its captain. Its sails ripple then swell in unison to welcome the breeze. As the great masts creak and the ship begins to pull away, spewing foam from the bow, George feels a tug of envy. The presence of Pym on the ship and that of the Loyal Pandora nearby had up to now given George some sense of normality. The navy, though dwarfed by Easton’s ships, was present. Now, as the Loyal Pandora slices through the waters as fast as the wind will carry it, George feels the boards of the Happy Adventure wobble beneath his feet. Certain irrefutable realities begin creeping into his brain. The first of these is that Easton is a man who defies every authority but his own; the second is that even though one out of his last two guests was decapitated, Easton has emerged from the controversy with the grace and ease of a man who has never sinned. But most of all, more fearsome than all the show of power and the impressive line of cannons below, is the calmness and geniality of the man. When explaining Baxter’s death he soothed them all as though he were a giant playing with babes. Such is the discrepancy of power between captor and captives. He could crush them both in an instant if he wished.

  That night George stays in his own cabin. Easton has claimed to have a headache, an intelligence delivered with the gesture of placing a handkerchief to his temple as though he were somebody’s maiden aunt tired from too hectic a social pace.

  George now sits upon his bed rather pensively, his heart quickening whenever he hears a footstep nearby in case it be the slave coming with his supper. And at last there is a knock.

  “Come!” he says quickly.

  The slave enters with a large tray. Her movements are silent and graceful as usual. She does not look at George directly which disappoints him at first. Somehow he had half-believed some intimacy may have developed at breakfast when he secretly witnessed her shyness. He realizes now, as he watches her place the tray on the side table, pick up the wine jug and pour the wine into a goblet, that such an idea was absurd. He cannot expect intimacy by merely observing. The wine makes a pleasing, sloshing sound and George urgently tries to think of something to say. But it is already too late. She gives the merest bow without looking at him and walks to the door.

  “Stop!” he cries suddenly.

  She turns startled. Her hand remains on the rim of the open door.

  “Just a moment, please.”

  He wants her to close the door again but doesn’t quite know how to ask. He gives a nervous laugh. The slave merely gazes back at him. Although she is mainly expressionless there is the ghost of a question overcoming her features.

  “Please,” he says, standing and motioning her back into the room with what he hopes is an encouraging gesture.

  Her large eyes watch him for a moment and then she obeys, closing the door, her fingers sliding along the wood as she does so. She walks a pace or two into the room. George notices her hair properly for the first time. His dreams had tried to recreate it in Rosalind’s free-flowing style. He can see now under the rim of her bonnet that it is of a curious texture he has never seen before—intricately curled and crinkled like blackened moss.

  George looks down for a second as though the cabin’s gold-fringed rug might give him a clue as to what he can say. Then he smiles and glances again at the slave’s face. The expression has changed. It is more curious and perhaps a little wary.

  “Thank you for bringing my food,” he says. The words catch in his throat with their obvious stupidity. The slave’s frown turns into a bemused smile.

  “You’re welcome,” she says. Although he has heard it before, her voice still surprises him with its mellow tone. He is not sure what he was expecting. Perhaps he thought she would sound like the tropics—intemperate and savage. He did hear once that, when they feel threatened, black slaves talk either in crude grunts or in crow-like screeches. This slave’s voice was not only soft; it was almost cultured.

  “I hope our words today at breakfast did not offend you,” he says quickly.

  The smile disappears.

  “Why do you want to talk to me?” She asks but makes no move to leave.

  He hesitates, then speaks gently, “You must forgive me. This ship, everything here, is strange to me.”

  She surveys him intently for a moment.

  “Easton is strange to you?”

  George is taken aback by the question, especially the phrasing of it. She calls him plain “Easton,” and she seems willing to talk about him.

  “Yes,” he replies in a whisper
. He takes a short step closer.

  Her eyes darken fractionally.

  “Easton lies,” she says.

  George stares for a moment, aware of the spider’s web delicacy of this conversation, aware she is telling him things that are surely forbidden and that he must maintain the trust he has gained, apparently by accident.

  “He lies?” he prompts gently.

  “The head. The boy,” she says. “Nobody does that where I come from. It’s Easton. It’s all him.”

  Blood rushes around George’s ears and his skin begins to burn. This is exactly what he did not wish to hear. Yet it has been spoken with a conviction and sincerity which cannot be denied. What reason could she have for lying when the practice had been so eloquently defended by Easton? No, she wasn’t lying. Which meant the whole thing, all those elaborate explanations of doorways, souls and the afterworld were part of the most bare-faced, treacherous deceit which could be imagined. It means that Easton must grow even larger in his estimation both in his power and in his malignancy.

  George sways and almost stumbles. The slave takes a short step back.

  “What really happened? Did you see him die?”

  “Yes, I saw it,” she says. An expression bitter, hurt and telling of long experience spills over her face.

  “Did Baxter, the boy, draw his sword?”

  The woman breaks into an unhappy laugh. The corners of her mouth turn down. She says nothing.

  “No?”

  She sighs, her eyes becoming moist. “The boy talks. Easton yawns. The boy talks. Easton scratches his head. The boy talks. Easton’s sword goes into the boy’s neck. The boy chokes. Easton peels an apple, watching. The boy dies. That is what happened. Then he tells me ‘go!,’ he has work with the body.”

  George backs off onto the bed, feeling sick. He sits down. The woman remains before him. She sways as though about to leave.

  “No,” he gasps, “don’t go yet. I must know...” His mind is buzzing in confusion and horror. The idea that this woman can continue to serve Easton and satisfy his every whim is suddenly abhorrent to him. He remembers the first night when Easton’s hands had touched hers on the goblet stem and he caught a lascivious glance upon the pirate’s face. Did she return it? It is hard to remember. She certainly didn’t draw away.

  The woman stares down at him, half curious, half sympathetic, while he catches his breath. “What I want to know is,” he begins before his thoughts have properly formed, “what I want to know...is, why have you never tried to escape?”

  The woman’s eyes slowly widen. She presses her hand into her breast. “Me!” she exclaims. “Escape?” George recognizes the arched body and flashing eyes of a woman’s anger. Even through his malaise he is surprised to note how similar the gestures are to those of women from England. “Maybe I escape and captain my own ship, you think, Captain Dawson?”

  He looks up, surprised at his name on her lips.

  “Maybe I lead my own flotilla against Easton! Maybe I go to the King and ask for money to do this! Do you think he would?”

  George looks down at the rug. “Sorry,” he says lamely.

  “You are the captain. You do something. You and the admiral!”

  She walks out and the door swings to with a clunk.

  Chapter Seven

  George spends a fitful night. He dreams of a flag-draped corpse hitting the water, then sinking slowly with bubbles fizzling to the surface. He dreams of the slave woman in a captain’s uniform striding alone up and down the deck of the Happy Adventure with a storm raging all around her. She walks with her arms behind her back in the manner of a great sea captain weighing a decision. George dreams of himself and Admiral Whitbourne dressed as menials, serving Easton with meat and wine at his luxurious table. He dreams that the movements of his limbs have become magically joined to Easton’s will, that he will refill a goblet or carve another slice of meat, not in response to any spoken command but through some internal twitch of Easton’s brain. He finds himself degenerating through the dream into a multi-limbed spider-like creature, able to perform many tasks at once in answer to Easton’s will. He dreams that as he refills Easton’s goblet he hears a low, rhythmic crying sound which swells and dies with the swaying of the ship. Easton, his face pulsing in the sulphurous candlelight, says nothing but whispers at him in thoughts to ignore it.

  When George wakes he finds that the ship really is swaying and pitching. He sits up quickly, throws off the bedclothes and lowers his feet onto the rug. The floor rises and tips and odd noises like an unsteady drumbeat vibrate somewhere deep beneath the floor—perhaps some unsecured cargo rolling against a beam.

  His first thought about the previous night is that his talk with the woman might have been part of his dream. But this already slim chance slips further and further away with each moment. With every tip and sway of the cabin floor, his dreamland retreats, leaving a clear memory only of his waking hours. The conversation did take place, and the slave woman was not lying. After she left he sat for an hour or more taking it in. Then suddenly hunger pangs came over him. He tried to push them back, but his stomach was raging. He wandered over to the tray and drank the wine the slave had poured. He looked down at the meat, which was unsalted pork, another small miracle, as it meant Easton kept and regularly slaughtered pigs onboard. He went back to the bed and struggled hard with himself. He cannot partake of another feast bestowed by a man he knew for certain was a cold-blooded murderer. For a while it looked as though this admonition might win through. But the wine on an empty stomach had the dual effect of increasing his hunger and weakening his resolve, and the meat had looked glistening and moist. He ate hungrily, then, throwing back another goblet of wine, he went to bed willing sleep to come quickly.

  Now, as he sits remembering, the wine and pork repeat in his gullet. The knowledge comes to him that Easton is much worse than any ordinary cold-blooded murderer; he is a murderer who lies. And he lies not through fear of detection, but through the sheer joy of the power it brings him. He leaves his lies open for discovery, almost daring anyone to name them, and if George were to name them, what then? He feels a sharp pain in his Adam’s apple which quickly grows and encircles his neck.

  George listens to the storm—to the constant roar and moan of the boiling sea; the rattle and drum from deep below; the whistling, hissing noises of the wind and spray. A growling thunder begins to sound, and it seems distant enough to have come from beyond the rim of the world. The porthole flashes twice. George feels as though a great nameless hunger surrounds him. He feels as though the ship is bouncing in an enormous, living belly. The creak and groan of the vessel’s beams are merely a prelude to the implosion that will occur when they are ingested by the surrounding tempest.

  He should have tried to escape Easton when he had the chance. The impossibility of such an attempt has grown like the storm into monster proportions. The word “escape” is accompanied in his imagination by a vision of himself diving off the deck rail naked into the sizzling, heaving sea a thousand miles from land. A few days ago Easton was a pirate outside George’s home port. A pirate with a sense of defiance, but merely a lawbreaker nonetheless. Now he seems like a wicked monarch, commanding armed ships and legions of men without even needing the whip. He is a politician, executing his enemies while keeping his righteous tongue.

  George looks over the past days and nights and wonders whether there was anything he and the admiral should have done to curtail this growth from rogue to demigod. Then he realizes. It’s merely a matter of perception. Easton was the latter all along. He was not a rogue posing as a monarch; he was a monarch posing as a rogue. Knowing this earlier wouldn’t have saved them.

  As George sits on the side of his bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped at his lowered forehead, another sound reaches him through the multitudinous storm. It is a noise softer but no less urgent—the woman’s moaning again. Now it seems louder and more rapid. Is this the woman, his woman with the dark eyes and the soft, me
llow voice? A thought flashes through his mind, an explanation as to why her cries might be more anguished than before. The word comes smouldering into his brain: torture.

  The sound is not like before—now seems more pain than sorrow. It is crying for help. Surely Easton has found out she has been talking to him, telling him the truth about Baxter, and now he is exacting punishment.

  George dresses quickly. He had been meaning to get to the admiral first and disclose to him everything he has discovered. But this is more urgent. His heart beats as he fastens his buckle. Incredibly, Easton has left both the admiral and himself with pistols. Perhaps this was not so surprising for one with such overpowering confidence. Perhaps it was rather like a tiger arming a mouse. But a bullet is a bullet and Easton is not indestructible. If it means saving the woman from torture George will do it and damn the consequences. George tucks the pistol now into his belt and marches outside into the storm.

  The spray hits him immediately and the wind almost slides him along the water-soaked deck. He grips onto a cabin rail and looks around. The wind howls mercilessly, yet the wiry crew are silently climbing ropes and securing leads and chains even now. As the spray and mist clear for a second George sees all the way through to the deck nearest the bow. There he beholds Easton himself spinning the wheel, standing firm and unthreatened, just a dark silhouette against the groaning, grey sky.

  Knowing this is his chance, George gropes along the cabin rail to the entrance to Easton’s cabin. He gains the vestibule and stands dripping and out of breath for a moment before pushing the inner door. The cabin is empty; as the ship tilts from side to side, the various silk hangings shiver like ripples in a pool. George creeps slowly toward the serving hatch. The painful moans of the woman seem to emanate from some way beyond that door. Suddenly, the cabin sways sharply to stern and George, still only halfway through the room, has to reach out and steady himself against a table. A dainty clock tinkles as the ship continues to pitch, and an ornamental sea shell tilts from side to side rapping its knuckles on a polished surface. The vessel steadies for the moment and George continues. At last he reaches the serving hatch. He pushes, his heart pounding. It opens easily into darkness and George scoots through. The door closes behind him. Here the moaning is louder and more painful sounding, though he sees only a small space with two bunks, one on either side. This tiny room is illuminated at the far end by flickering light which comes up through a gap in the floor. He approaches to find a laddered stairway descending into the light. The woman’s moaning is much louder now; he imagines he can almost feel her breath like moist rain as he steps onto the ladder and begins to climb down.