A Flash of Silver Page 2

Something odd was taking place over at the booth now, Farrow had lifted one of the burning candles from its holder on the wall and was holding it out. Young Tupper looked between the two men before him nervously.

  “They said that if I was to stand a chance of becoming a member of the crew then I had to trust them. They said that if they poured the wax from the candle onto my hands, it wouldn’t hurt, that it would be cool before it even touched me.”

  From across the tavern, young Tupper let out a sharp yelp and snatched his hands to his chest. The other tenants of the Three Crowns paused briefly to see what the excitement was, before deciding that there was none and returning to their business. Somewhere a piece of crockery smashed. A new song started up.

  “But it did hurt,” said the Narwhal.

  “It did. Not for long, but in the moment it was agony. A cruel trick.”

  “A test.”

  “What?” Tupper moved his gaze from his suffering younger self to Deeks and Farrow. Neither was laughing as he had remembered, but were straight faced. Farrow nodded solemnly and Deeks offered the boy a drink as recompense.

  “You knew all along that the wax wouldn’t be cool. You were smart enough to know your old clothes would give you away; you were smart enough to know how heat works. But you did it anyway didn’t you, Tupper? Held out your hands obediently.”

  Tupper nodded. He had wanted to escape his old life so badly.

  “It was a test of your obedience,” continued the Narwhal. “They wanted to be sure you would be willing to do as ordered, even if you didn’t agree or understand. And you passed.”

  Farrow had stood briefly, shaken the boy’s stinging hand and sent him off again with a slip of paper: instructions to return to the harbour the following day and a list of what little he would need to bring with him. Also another test — the boy could read.

  “Why are you showing me all this, Narwhal?” Tupper asked as the younger Tupper left the tavern once more.

  “That was just a moment of interest, of reflection,” answered the Narwhal. “Perhaps we should look at what is happening a few booths along?”

  Tupper took this hint and made his way around a table where a tense game of cards was taking place. There were plenty of faces he recognised in the Three Crowns — either existing members of the crew, or other men who would come aboard the same day as he did. In the booth pointed out by the Narwhal however, he found two more: Willy Black and John O’Leary. They were both cooks, and rarely seen out of one another’s company. Both were hunched forward, conversing with the other figure at the table — an older gentleman wearing a blue travelling cloak, a white rose in his lapel.

  “There is no one, single event that causes a ship to be lost at sea, Tupper,” explained the Narwhal. “There are many. A chain of isolated incidents that together form the rare but unfortunate circumstances for tragedy to take place. For the loss of the Windermere — this is one of the first.”

  Tupper moved closer to try and hear what the men were discussing, but although they could not possibly know of his presence, the men quickly drew their conversation to a close.

  The cloaked gentleman slid a cloth purse across the table. “There will be twice that waiting for you in Hudson Bay.”

  “And what if we need to contact you again?” asked Willy Black.

  “You can’t and you won’t,” the man answered curtly, before departing.

  O’Leary quickly moved the purse out of the sight and the two men exchanged a nervous glance.

  “I still don’t understand,” said Tupper.

  * * *

  “Which of you was it?!” roared Farrow. The man’s hat was in his hands, being twisted in agitation.

  “It was me, sir,” said Tupper.

  “No — it was me, Mr Farrow,” followed Kelso. “Tupper’s just tryin’ to cover for me. It was me. I took the puddin’.”

  Overhead, gulls called. The hot sun beat down on them. Some of the other sailors watched on in fascination.

  “How long had you been aboard when this happened?” asked the Narwhal.

  “Just four days,” answered Tupper. They were observing from up in the rigging, a place Tupper normally despised to be.

  Down below, the scene continue to play out — Farrow berating the two youngsters, and neither refusing to allow the other take the blame.

  “It must have been one of the pair of you! The stores were locked, which means some bugger managed to squeeze under the door. You two are the only ones small enough to have managed it — Jimmy Torrence is the only other, and he’s been stuck in his hammock with gut-ache since near enough we left port!”

  “It was me sir — it really was,” continued Kelso.

  “It was me! It was me, sir. I’m so sorry,” insisted Tupper, almost as soon as if friend had finished talking.

  Farrow shook his head in frustration.

  “Mr Farrow — have you managed to deduce the man guilty of theft aboard ship?” called a voice. It was Captain Dixon-Smythe, looking down from the forecastle. He was an intensely mannered gentleman: perfectly rigid spine; a distant look in his eyes, all but when he felt that a crime or laziness had been committed amongst his men.

  Farrow gritted his teeth. He had already delayed giving the captain an answer twice and understood now that neither boy would admit the truth of the situation. His eyes flicked between the two midshipmen one final time.

  “It was this one captain!” answered Farrow, pointing the finger of guilt squarely at Kelso.

  “What is that shipmate’s name?”

  “Nicolas Kelso,” replied Kelso himself, defiantly.

  “Give that one the belt, Mr Farrow, one and a half score,” instructed the captain. “And the other one can take the next week’s middle watch for his trouble.”

  No sooner was the sentence passed than the captain was gone again.

  “Do you not see? It would have been easier for us all if just one of you had owned up,” muttered Farrow. “Fetch me the belt, Mr Deeks!”

  “And did Kelso steal the pudding?” asked the Narwhal.

  “No,” replied Tupper, next to her. “I did. I was so hungry, the work was so relentless and the food they gave us was never enough. I just wanted something in my belly so I could get to sleep.”

  “So you snuck into the stores?”

  “I did. I just wanted a little something! I didn’t realise that there was anything special about the kidney and raisin pudding. I didn’t even know what it was, just a big round thing wrapped up in muslin. I broke into a little of that, but it tasted good, so rich and tangy. So I had a little more, and before I knew it, I’d gobbled it all. How I was supposed to know the captain had had it brought aboard specially for St Crispin’s day?”

  “And poor Nicolas took the fall?”

  “He wouldn’t give in! You saw me — I tried so hard to admit the truth!”

  Down below, two sailors had been ordered to hold Kelso over a herring barrel. Deeks appeared and passed the whipping belt to Farrow — it was a long stretch of leather split into two strips at the end, each bearing a metal stud. The quartermaster rolled up his sleeves and began dishing out Kelso’s punishment. For the first few, the youngster couldn’t help but cry out, his pain echoing across the waves. Every man aboard ship paused to listen. After several more beltings though, his cries began to fall away into just a constant stream of muffled sobbing.

  “He didn’t speak to me for an entire day after that,” said Tupper. His younger self had retreated below deck, unable to watch anymore. “Not that I would have known what to say to him. I wish it could have been me that took the punishment. I wanted to go and own up, but Kelso talked me out of it. He said they’d just punish him again for having lied.”

  “He is a good friend,” said the Narwhal.

  “Was a good friend,” corrected Tupper bitterly.

  “You did not go unpunished yourself though. It was because of this incident that you ended up taking the middle watch, that lonely bitterest stretch throug
h the darkest hours of night.”

  * * *

  Everything had gone dark. Dark and cold. They were still on the deck of the Windermere, but now it was all but deserted. Sitting middeck in a small nook, next to a bell and an hourglass was Tupper, arms crossed and head slumped on his shoulders.

  “That’s you,” said the Narwhal.

  “I was so exhausted,” Tupper replied. “I tried my best not to fall asleep, I really did!”

  There came a creaking of wooden boards as a figure approached — Mr Deeks. At first he rushed forward to awaken the sleeping sailor, then paused and watched the hourglass for a moment, waiting for the last few sands to run out.

  “Oi! Wake up this very instant ye feckless little wretch!” shouted Mr Deeks.

  “Why are you showing me all of this, Narwhal?” asked Tupper as the conversation, still fresh in his memory, played out before them once more.

  “I am going to offer you a choice, Tupper, and I want you to be able to make an informed decision. Therefore I am laying all of the facts out before you. This night — this moment — is yet another piece of the pattern that will undo the Windermere.”

  “My having fallen asleep on watch caused the ship to sink?”

  “In a way.”

  “But Deeks found me in time! We never lost track of time, Deeks avoided all that.”

  “Exactly,” nodded the Narwhal without nodding.

  The conversation taking place by the hourglass had now paused. Mr Deeks turned and looked almost directly at Tupper and the Narwhal.

  “Does he... he can’t actually see us can he?” said Tupper.

  The Narwhal gave no reply. Deeks’ head moved up and down ever so slightly — a nod? A moment later he resumed his conversation with the, only slightly younger, Tupper.

  “None of this is real is it?” asked Tupper. “Being back home, the Three Crowns, this. It’s all some sort of an illusion.”

  The Narwhal did not answer.

  “Am I dead?”

  Deeks took his leave now, heading back below deck. Tupper knew what would come next — the appearance of the Cruel Tide and this time he wanted to get a better look at the thing, to understand exactly what sort of horror it was, but already the ship’s timbers were arranging themselves about them.

  * * *

  Tupper recognised they were now on the second deck, near the stores where he had snuck in and stolen that fateful pudding. An oil lamp on the wall illuminated the corridor and the two men busying themselves there. It was Black and O’Leary.

  “What are they up to?” Tupper whispered. At the men’s feet lay a long bundle of sack-cloth.

  “Let us observe and find out,” replied the Narwhal.

  Whilst O’Leary kept watch along the corridor, Black worked his way through a ring of keys — possibly the same as Mr Farris usually wore upon his belt — trying to locate the one necessary to unlock the small, reinforced door at the end of the corridor. The powder room.

  “Have you not found it yet, you simpleton?” hissed O’Leary.

  “It ain’t easy y’know,” replied Black. “Here — if it’s so bleedin’ easy — you do it!”

  O’Leary made a rude gesture at Black who responded by flinging the keys at him. They struck the cook’s chest then fell to the ground with a rattle. Both men’s eyes widened in horror. From the deck above, there had been a steady creaking of boards which now halted.

  “You great idiot,” whispered O’Leary.

  Both men froze like statues for a few moments, their complexions ghostly pale. After a while they decided the danger must have passed and O’Leary handed the keys back to Black. When he turned back to resume his sentry duty though, he found himself facing the hunched figure of Mr Deeks. The petty officer’s jaw was set in a miserable grimace.

  “What’s all this?” growled Deeks. He kicked aside the top layer of sack-cloth, revealing the pile of muskets contained within.

  “Why we’re just followin’ orders, Mr Deeks,” replied O’Leary, straightening up. “Mr Larbert asked us to go forth and fetch these here weapons, so that his men might take some target practice in the morning.”

  “An’ did he instruct ye to go to the powder room as well?” asked Deeks, one eyebrow raised.

  “Why yes sir, so that they might have some gunpowder with which to fire their muskets. Not much good otherwise, sir,” O’Leary continued, his confidence returning.

  “Highly unlikely!” Deeks responded. “Not even a hired shooter like Larbert would be daft enough to take stock from the powder room so far in advance ah its requirement, why that would that defeat the very purpose ah such a chamber. What’s even more outlandish however, is that he would make the request in the middle of the night, an’ that he would select two cooks to run such an errand! No lads, I smell the bitter tang of deception in the air. I know theft when ah see it!”

  “You mistake us gravely, sir!” continued O’Leary, but not without shooting Black a desperate glance first.

  “Oh, ah wish that ah did!” Deeks grabbed a fistful of O’Leary’s collar and shook it. “Ye mean to steal weapons from our inventory, shot as well no doubt, an’ fill a handful of flasks with gunpowder. Then what? Hide them in yer hammocks an’ take them ashore in Newfoundland, trade them to the French? It that near enough the truth of it?”

  “Their for the Micmak!” protested Black, referring to one of the native tribes who now found their homeland encroached upon by Europeans and their alien ways. O’Leary’s eyes rolled.

  “An’ jus’ who do ye suppose they’ll be turning their guns against?” snapped Deeks. “Ah swear I’ll see you both hang for this!”

  “Can’t let you do that, sir!” said O’Leary and went for his belt, no doubt to fetch a blade, but Deeks expected such a response and countered him. The two men fell upon one another, swiping and shoving viciously. From the other end of the hall, Black just looked on, dumbfounded; a key still resting in the lock.

  “Mr Deeks! We have to do something!” called Tupper, rushing forward, but his actions had no bearing on the events before them, almost as if he were swishing his hands through images reflected upon water.

  “If Deeks had made his way back to his cabin just a few moments later or a few moments earlier, then he would not have heard the jangle of keys from below deck,” explained the Narwhal as the brawl continued before them, growing more and more desperate. “He would not have come down to investigate and, although O’Leary and Black would have succeeded with their subterfuge, the events you see before you would not have taken place.”

  Tupper felt the warmth of tears in his eyes as he watched helplessly. O’Leary had finally managed to get the better of Deeks and pinned the older man to the wall, throwing punch after punch into his face. Deeks’ nose was clearly broken, the rest of his face quickly disappearing under a flow of dark, fresh blood. A hideous, gargling sound was coming from his throat.

  Then the final two, unlikely yet equally important, events in the pattern happened at once. Firstly, Deeks managed to blindly claw a hold of the lantern hanging from the wall over his head. He made to fling it at O’Leary but missed, sending the lantern soaring down the hall. Secondly, Black realised the key in his hand was, at long last, the one he had been seeking — it had turned and clicked comfortably in the lock. The door in his hand was now loose. He turned to call out this good news, but was met instead by the flying lantern. The glass shattered as it struck him, the spilt shale-oil quickly igniting and seeping across him.

  The man screamed, a look of wild terror in his eyes. Deeks and O’Leary paused at the sound and froze in terrible understanding of what might well be about to happen. Black tried to pat down the flames on his chest, only causing the fire to spread to his arms, burning his fingers. In the shock of sudden bright pain, he fell backwards, tripping over the lip of the door and into the powder room.

  “No!” screamed Tupper.

  * * *

  He felt the pressure of the Atlantic pressing into his eyeballs once mo
re, accumulating against his ear drums and whispering at his mind to open his lungs.

  Kelso and the other sailors were again drifting about him. Below, the Windermere continued its descent, slowly turning enough to expose the wide hole torn in its hull where the powder room had once been.

  No rocks, no winds of storm, no enemy ships. The Windermere had sunk in calm waters, on an empty horizon, and all because of a series of unexpected events that together created a catastrophic conclusion to the life of the ship and all those aboard.

  Tupper blinked wearily and turned to see the Narwhal was still at his side, now very much physically present.

  “So what happens now?” asked Tupper. “We are far from any port or any other ship. Even if I make it to the surface, I’ll only end up treading water till my body gives up.”

  “You remember I said that I was going to offer you a choice, Tupper?” asked the Narwhal, and the boy nodded as best he could. “A series of unexpected, often unrelated events and choices led to this tragedy, but if only one of those were to change in the slightest, then the whole chain would fall apart.”

  “The Windermere would be saved? But isn’t it already too late? You’ve shown me the past, but I had no power to change or interact with it.”

  “That is true and remains true. Those were but reflections of history. I want you to think about the moments leading up to the sinking of the Windermere though.”

  Tupper tried to do so. “Well that’s what’s funny — I can’t. I remember seeing the seaweed... the Cruel Tide, but then suddenly the ship had already sunk and I was in the water. I don’t know what happened in between.”

  “The Cruel Tide’s pride got the better of her, and she decided to show herself to you sooner than she ought to have. She wanted to boast, to make you tremor before the inescapability of the act she was about to commit. But by doing this, she changed things ever so slightly — you are trapped in a moment Tupper. A moment in which both realities exist. There is the moment where you are safe and sound, dreaming at your station, and there is the moment you see before you now, where all is lost.”

  “I understand,” said Tupper then shook his head. “Well actually I don’t understand at all. None of this makes any sort of sense, but I get the bit about the two moments. You’re saying I can either wake up and try and change things... or I can stay asleep and let history run its course. You’re asking me to choose.”