Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

THIRTEEN: Domestic Economy

THEY ROWED OUT FARTHER next day to the bow of the Harmony. Here the water was deeper, the diving harder, but it was worth it; for here John brought up what proved to be the carpenter’s chest at last, as well as a few barrels of salt beef.

And here he spotted one-pound shot scattered across the sea floor like windfall apples under a tree, and busied himself collecting as many as he could each dive, gathering them into a sack he’d made from an old coat sleeve tied off at one end. The coat’s owner was beyond caring, but they had buried him a little deeper, just in case, and muttered a few prayers over him to make up for it.

John was crouched over, scooping up a few last shot on his fifth dive, when he heard a thundering knocking from above, as though they in the boat were beating on the gunwales. Which, as it turned out, was just what they were doing, trying frantically to get his attention.

He turned to look upward and was hit in the shoulder by a gray shape that struck him hard, flowing smoothly past. He turned, peering through his floating hair, and saw a reef shark turning to come back at him. Straight at his face it came, a big dead-eyed bugger like a battering ram. John, terrified, swung his fistful of shot and hit it square on the nose. Its forward momentum was halted; a sort of caul veiled its eyes, as though it was squinting. As it paused in front of him John grabbed its head, with his thumbs through the gills on either side, and rammed his forehead into its nose.

The shark shook violently. John let go, pushing off from the bottom. Sejanus was already reaching down for him, and grabbed him under the arms as he broke the surface. He hauled him half into the boat. John clutched at the thwarts and writhed forward, trying to lift his lower body out of the water, but felt something hit his calf and then sharp pain there. He bellowed in fear. Sejanus grabbed hold of the back of his breech-clout and hauled so hard it came off, but did succeed in getting John the rest of the way into the boat.

John, still screaming, heard Mr. Tudeley grunting with effort as he struck at something with an oar. Then the oar was hitting John across the back of his legs too, which hurt rather more than the other pain, and he heard Sejanus laughing. John turned in outrage and saw Mr. Tudeley clubbing a dogfish that had come into the boat with its teeth sunk in John’s calf. It lay now detached in the bottom of the boat, stunned, and John was bleeding like a stuck pig from a circular wound in his leg.

Sejanus was still laughing so hard he couldn’t speak, but he grabbed the oar from Mr. Tudeley and rowed them ashore as quickly as he could. It wasn’t until he ran them aground that he was able to catch his breath enough to say: “Bind up his leg with the breech-clout, Winty! You’ve killed us a nice fish for dinner, too. White men make good bait, I guess, eh?”

They went back up the trail to the other side of the island. Mr. Tudeley ran ahead to the camp, to fetch John back a pair of breeches, while John limped along leaning on Sejanus. He felt dizzy and faint.

“Could have been worse,” said Sejanus. “Could have been the big one got your leg. You don’t go back in the water until your leg heals up, eh? Maybe Winty and I will try our luck. Maybe out on the Dutchman’s wreck. She had a big fine stern cabin; daresay there’s charts and sextants and such in there. Come on, don’t you go swooning. Talk to me! How do we build a pinnace? You ever built a boat before?”

“No,” said John. “I just reckoned we’d make it like the longboat. Only bigger.”

“Use the longboat as a pattern? That’s good. That’ll work. Collect the busted bits of wreck that’s washed ashore, eh? Some fine big planks washed up. Come on, keep walking, not much farther now. I see the camp. Oh, lord—” Sejanus began laughing again, and John gave a strangled cry of horror.

Mrs. Waverly, clad only in a shift, was running to meet them, closely pursued by Mr. Tudeley, who was waving his hands and protesting “But ma’am—but, ma’am!” Sejanus, with great presence of mind, snatched off his scarf and screened John’s privates with it.

“You was supposed to bring my breeches,” John shouted at Mr. Tudeley.

“It’s not my fault! She’s washed everything,” protested Mr. Tudeley.

“Oh, my poor Mr. James!” Mrs. Waverly fell to her knees beside John. She loosed the breech clout to examine his wound and it promptly gushed forth blood again. “Oh, my dear! This must be sewn up!”

John tried to explain that all he needed was a tighter bandage and a good-lie down and some rum, but somehow he came over all strange. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his face in camp and hearing Mrs. Waverly saying, “Hold his hands, for this will sting.” He yelled and started up when she splashed rum in the wound, and only Sejanus holding him down (and the consciousness that he was still naked under a bit of sailcloth) kept him from jumping to his feet. He put his head down and swore.

“Please don’t use that sort of language, Mr. James,” said Mrs. Waverly, threading a needle. “It ill becomes you.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said John, and gritted his teeth as she stitched him up.

He was given a big shellful of coconut water and rum afterward, and told to lie quiet. He was content enough to do this, sipping his rum and watching Mrs. Waverly move about the camp. Her shift was of rather fine material and gave the imagination a lot to work with. It seemed to unnerve Mr. Tudeley, who blushed and stammered, and stared when he didn’t think she noticed.

The whole camp had a domestic appearance now, with fresh-laundered laundry spread out on bushes to dry in the sun, for all the world like washing-day in the fields by Hackney Brook. Sejanus went back and fetched up the dogfish, which he gutted and cleaned. Mrs. Waverly cut it into steaks and grilled them over the coals. Later she knelt by John and fed him choice bits with her fingers, smiling and chatting on inconsequential matters with such grace and elegance, she might have been at Court.

“Now, dear Mr. James, I hope you’ll indulge me by drinking a little more coconut water,” she said at last, wiping her hands.

“Yes, ma’am,” said John. “I’m sorry about the indecency, ma’am.”

She laughed gaily. “Why, Mr. James, a gentleman in his natural state is not indecent if there is no lewd purpose to his undress. In any case, we are presently far from Society and its constraints, as Mr. Tudeley pointed out.” She patted his shoulder, and perhaps her hand lingered a moment too long on his bare skin. “Nor are you an ill-favored man.”

“Very kind of you to say so, I’m sure,” he said, trying not to notice that he could see her nipples through the gauzy fabric of her shift.

John might have died and gone to Fiddler’s Green, so pleasant his next couple of days were; for he had nothing to do but lie in the shade in his shirt, and sip coconut water while Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley worked at collecting planks from the wreckage scattered on both sides of the island. They had a go at diving on the Dutchman’s wreck themselves, from which they did manage to recover some navigational gear and sodden charts, before another reef shark came cruising to see what they were doing.

Mrs. Waverly found that going about in her shift was altogether so comfortable and convenient, in the intemperate heat, that she declined to wear anything else. John fashioned himself a crutch to hobble about with for necessary purposes, but mostly he lay still as he had been bid, with his bandaged leg propped up on a roll of sailcloth. He watched Mrs. Waverly’s bare ankles twinkling about, and observed keenly as she bent over to stir fish-broth simmering in the pot they had salvaged, or crouched to rub fish oil into the leather of her shoes. His leg hurt a bit, and itched powerfully as the wound began to heal, but she treated him as tenderly as though he were at death’s door. John was altogether a happy man.

Mr. Tudeley, on the other hand, was quite flustered. The first day or so he avoided looking at Mrs. Waverly at all, averting his eyes from her whenever possible.

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.