The Emerald Storm

Chapter 42

A ship under control is in balance between the push of the wind and the resistance of the sea, a rudder squirting it forward. But if overcanvassed and badly balanced, vessels can veer dangerously out of control. At Brienne’s direction, we lashed a rope to the wheel to ease the strain of holding it, got down our remaining shreds of canvas, and rode bare poles before the wind, but still had to steer carefully. The storm kept shifting in a great gyre of cyclonic fury, cranking to push us more and more to the north. For hour after hour in the night all I could see was the dirty gray of sea foam as breaking waves rushed past our stern quarter, a boil that bore all the malevolence of whatever gods we’d offended. Despite the latitude, I was numb with cold and dull with exhaustion. Astiza emerged from Brienne’s cabin and kept me alive with rum and sausage.

“Harry’s gone to sleep,” she told me. “So has Martel.”

“I envy them.”

“I think the Frenchman might die of his wounds.”

“Better for him than meeting Dessalines.”

Our bow was invisible in the dark, but I could hear seas breaking there, as if against a rock. Then a surge of water down the length of the deck that poured back off. The diving bell had been lashed to the mainmast, its window looking back at us like a Cyclops eye. The ship lifted itself from each swell as if old and weary. French sailors and black freemen got the sails off except for two that had ripped to shreds and flailed in the wind, and then hunched and clung like crustaceans, everyone praying to their favorite saint. The storm shrieked as I’d never heard anything before; it strummed the spars till they whistled and drummed, a moan that ate at me. I waited for the entire shaking ship finally to come apart, to dissolve into woody spray and be flung by the wind in a sleet of sawdust, until nothing marked where we’d ever been.

Yet the bomb ketch, while clumsy, was also stout. The ship wallowed like a sturdy toy, staggering up from every swell, and with each rise hope flickered. Maybe we could ride it out. We’d dive into a trough, water would pour across, and then we’d surface, a weary whale.

Without any clear announcement of dawn our surroundings eventually grew lighter, visibility slowly extending to the tip of the bowsprit and then beyond. Lead seas raced beside, and we staggered up slopes of great watery hills for a view of salt mist before sliding into darker valleys. I’d grabbed a chart, but there was no possibility of telling where we were. My vague plan was to return to Cap-Francois, deliver the treasure and prisoners, and then simply get away. No lingering in Paris, no playing the diplomat. I was done with great affairs and needed a thousand years to make up for the trauma I’d inflicted on my family.

I’d still find us a place where nothing ever happened.

“Will Harry come through?” I asked Astiza when I visited.

“He’s sick, but his stomach has emptied.” She looked as exhausted as me. “He doesn’t even know who he is, Ethan. Captivity, separation, war.”

“What a life I’ve given him. I’m sorry, Astiza.”

She looked doomed, seeing something I couldn’t. “We can’t take the treasure to Saint-Domingue.”

“I promised the blacks.”

She shook her head. “The treasure is cursed. Look at this storm. It will do them more harm than good. It was buried in that rock for a reason.”

“You say every treasure is cursed.”

“Hasn’t it been?”

“We’re not cursed to be poor. I don’t believe that.”

“What if the Maroons weren’t storing the treasure but getting rid of it? What if they’d found it wicked? What if they went into that cave knowing they couldn’t get out, simply to save their own people?”

“No. They were trapped by the current.”

“The treasure should go to Mexico.”

“Mexico! There are no more Aztecs, just Spanish overlords, crueler and greedier than French and British combined. It’s too late.”

“We’ve made a devil’s bargain. Ezili is a trickster, Ethan.” It was one woman’s suspicion of another.

“We’ll get to port, and it will feel so right.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. “We’ve been through worse, remember?”

“Not with a child.” She bit her lip.

“This storm will have to pass sometime.”

And miraculously, it did.

First there was a gap in the clouds and light flooded down, pushing back the boundaries of how far we could see.

We’d been sailing through an atmosphere in which the border between sea and air was indistinct, a fog of whipped spray and spume. We breathed mist. We tasted salt, heavy as we staggered up watery slopes and weightless as we plunged down. Our universe was the heaving ocean.

But as the light broadened and brightened, the wind began to drop precipitously. The change was eerie. The howl of the rigging subsided as if a discordant orchestra had taken an intermission. Pelee still lurched and dipped on chaotic seas, but now the sound was the slap of slack lines against wood, the creak of mortar against tackle, the groan of the hull, and the gush of sloppy water.

Blue sky appeared overhead.

The blacks and French sailors shakily stood and looked up in wonder. We’d been reprieved! In all directions was a dunescape of cresting seas, water streaked white. There was so much salt that even as wet wood gleamed, the ship looked dusty. Little streams ran up and down gunnels, and the air still smelled thick. Yet in minutes the tempest had turned into a weird calm.

Was this divine intervention? Had God answered the Catholics? Had Astiza found the correct prayer? Was Ezili present and helping?

Jubal rotated, looking around. No land was in sight, just a wall of clouds a few miles distant in every direction, rearing into the sky. “This is very odd.”

“It’s like being in a well.” Astiza looked thousands of feet up to that blue dome of sky.

“It’s salvation,” I tried. “The treasure isn’t cursed, it’s blessed. If ever there was a sign from God, this is it, don’t you think?”

Our ketch swayed like a crazed cradle, confused seas pitching it this way and that. Men crossed themselves.

“I’ve heard of this,” Brienne said fatalistically. “A false lull.”

“A miracle,” I insisted, with more spirit than I felt. “We need to answer this mercy with our own. When the waves subside, we’ll start a fire in the ship’s oven and make something hot for everyone, even Martel’s survivors. Jubal, divide the crew into three shifts and let some sleep. When the storm settles completely, the French sailors can take some sights and we’ll set a proper course. The stars tonight will be brilliant after such a wind; we can navigate. Let’s tie down what is loose, heave the dead overboard, and get ready to hoist a steadying sail again. Astiza, food into Harry.”

People began to do as I suggested. Four of Martel’s ruffians were dead, from wounds and exposure. These were rolled without ceremony into the sea, sinking in our wake.

I checked below. My archenemy was still breathing, and he opened his eyes to give me a weary, baleful stare. Crow and his companions had a gimlet eye as well.

“What happened to the wind?” Martel asked.

“It’s dropping.”

“What does that mean?”

“You lost, Martel.”

His head lolled, fatalistically. “Water.”

I gave him some, and the need for the kindness made me doubt my own instinct for revenge. Should I really give him to Dessalines? But he’d planned to send me a prisoner to France, hadn’t he?

I returned above, debating.

The ship had become even more ungainly without the stiff wind, so I asked Brienne which sail to risk. Canvas would steady our roll and begin to give us a feeling of command.

He glanced around. “None, monsieur.”

“Surely a staysail would help, would it not?”

He pointed. The clouds to our stern had drawn much closer, while those at our bow were drawing away. “It’s what I feared. We were simply in the storm’s eye.” The well of light was moving away from us, our ship drifting from one side of it to the other. The sky dimmed as if the Almighty were drawing a curtain. “It was not a miracle, monsieur, but cruelty. We’re not through the storm. We’re in its middle.”

And then, with doubled violence, the storm struck again.