Chase the Morning

I didn’t turn round. I hardly cared. Empty, a shadow, that was exactly how I felt – like a discarded garment forgotten on the ground. I thought of Don Pedro’s flesh slipping away, and shuddered; little better than that. It wasn’t just the hangover, it was worse, far worse. It was the memory of having been suddenly full, full to overflowing with a furious joy in life. I had been given a glimpse, a taste of what it was I most lacked – and it had all gone in fighting, all save those last few minutes. I had had no chance to turn my thoughts to anything else. I had tasted fullness, and had it snatched from my mouth.

But then Clare, who had held back while I was being sick, came to put a comforting arm about my shoulder, and that didn’t feel bad at all. And only a minute later came Pierce’s cheerful hail.

‘Ahoy there, my gentle lords and ladies! The boats are readied, the wind is from the land. Let us make all haste aboard, that we may be quit of this demon-haunted place with the first light of dawning!’

That fetched us. We scrambled up and half-staggered along to where the captain and Mall stood waiting by the boats. There rode the two ships at anchor in the mirroring bay, just as we had left them; but no ill shapes hung from the rigging now. ‘Aye, we’ve been aboard,’ said Mall, following my gaze. ‘While you yet slept. Made all secure, though in truth little enough was touched – unusual for Wolves, they must have been on the tightest leash.’

‘They were,’ I agreed, thinking of how nothing had been stolen from our office.

She smirked mischievously. ‘Even your gold was yet there in your cabin,’ she added, and a great cheer went up from the surviving crew. I looked at them, and thought of all they had risked, and of those whose long existences had found their eventual end on this quest – and I looked at Clare; and I thought how little money that gold actually represented, even with what more I’d promised.

‘I’ll double it!’ I shouted. ‘The whole bloody bonus! Double what I promised you!’

We were all but swept aboard shoulder-high. They nearly upset the boats. But Pierce’s bellow broke up the turmoil at once; we were shorthanded, and the rush to set sail was overwhelming. Everyone had to plunge in and help, whether they knew what they were doing or not. I found myself quite blithely scrambling up the ratlines with the mastheaders. Even shuffling out along the yard on the looped footrope to undo the sail-lashings wasn’t too bad, since the ship wasn’t heeling. And it was a great moment when the white mainsail boomed out beneath us, and seemed to fill with the very first high beam of the rising sun, a golden wind. I could even look down below and see Clare’s slender limbs among the team at the capstan, hauling up the anchor; and there was Israel Hands limping along, leading a party below.

What for, I found out as we scrambled back down to the deck, and the old Defiance began to get under way. Pierce shouted a warning to us, then a command, and the whole ship heeled with a thunderous crash. The Chorazin, still in shadow, juddered at her moorings; water fountained, and bits of planking flew skyward. ‘Be firing’ at ’er waterline,’ the topman next to me remarked sagely. Again the blast – and this time the black ship wallowed sharply, and began to turn on a broken mooring. One of the masts juddered free, and collapsed in a flailing mass of rigging.

‘A pricey prize she might’ve been!’ said another.

‘Balls!’ said my neighbour, and spat overside. ‘Who’d buy her? Nobbut more Wolves – and I’ll have their money by other means, I thank you.’

I joined Jyp and Mall on the quarterdeck, looking back as the Wolf ship settled into the shallow waters. ‘There’ll be scuba divers find that one day and thinking they’ve found the wreck of a pirate ship,’ remarked Jyp dryly.

‘Won’t they realize it hasn’t been sunk for two or three hundred years?’ I enquired.

Mall grinned and rumpled my hair. ‘Why, what year d’you think is this?’ she enquired innocently.

I put my hands to my head and groaned, while the others laughed. At least I knew better than to get into that sort of discussion now. I imagined that ship, no longer a living, travelling thing, sinking back into Time as it settled to the shallow bed, back to the era of its building and belonging; to become a haven and a shelter for small crawling things, to rot and break up, and at last be gently entombed by the pale shifting sands of the bay. I looked back at the island beyond, full of sleepy dawn sounds and the rush of surf – and, finding that I still wore the red sash, I undid it and tipped it over the stern. It spread out and floated in our wake for a moment, a scarlet stain on the blue waters of the bay; and then it folded in and sank from sight. I glanced up at the hillside, but I couldn’t make out the mansion anywhere. The whole view seemed cleaner now, and that was the way to leave it.