‘Anyway,’ added Jyp encouragingly, ‘we’re going to be moving in close before we fire. That’ll keep the shooting short. Might be they never even reach their guns!’
‘Let’s hope so!’ I said. ‘Let’s bloody hope so!’ A sort of chill horror was settling on me, at what I was about to do; I could have wished Jyp had been a bit more persuasive. I looked out to the moon. It was sinking fast now, almost touching the horizon; silver bled out of it across the strange ocean we sailed on, and turned it to a frosted mirror. Then for the first time I saw our enemy clearly, a little sharp-edged column of sails across the horizon, a child’s toy drifting and yet heavy with menace. It was hard to believe it held Clare, Clare from another, infinitely distant life … No; by now she was part of this one too.
‘Better make ready while we’ve a few easy minutes remaining!’ said Pierce. ‘Cox’n, relieve Mistress Mall at the helm! Mister Mate, up with the arms chest! Boarding parties, muster on the maindeck!’
At the mainmast the arms chest stood open, and cutlasses and pistols were being passed out to the milling men – about thirty, besides us. Jyp scrambed up onto the step and raised his voice. ‘Form into two parties as you draw your arms, by port and starboard watch! Port watch’ll be under my command, and we’ll board by the foremast stays! Starboards, take the mainmast, and follow Mistress Mall! Every man got his arms?’
A cheer went up, and a rattle of cutlasses.
‘Swell! Then into the scuppers with you, hunker down by the railings – well down, and clear of the gun tackle! Any man raises his head above that goddam rail before the order, I’ll have it off his shoulders! Okay? Hop to it, then – an’ give’em hell!’
Mall laid a hand on my arm. ‘You come with my band, Stephen; the leap will be less, and the footholds better!’
‘Suits me –’ Mall’s grip tightened suddenly; she was staring past me, to the bows. I turned, to see Stryge’s cabin door open, and the old man himself shuffling out, his strange companions behind him.
He paused a moment, stared blearily at us and said ‘Going to board them. Need help, don’t you?’
‘Depends,’ said Jyp thinly. ‘What’d you in mind exactly?’
‘Mine. And theirs. You two!’ ordered the old man briskly. ‘Go with the boarding parties. Help them.’
‘Hey, wait a goddam minute –’ roared Jyp, as Fynn, casting him a malevolent look, scuttled to hunch down among Jyp’s sailors. To a man they shrank away from him. But I was even more astonished to see the black-haired girl drift idly over to our group.
‘You take them,’ said the Stryge, implacable as ancient stone, ‘if you want to stand a chance of coming back. Give up and go home, otherwise. Now I’ll play my part. Stand ready!’
Jyp saw the looks the sailors exchanged at that, and acknowledged defeat with a sigh. I didn’t know what to think. I could guess well enough what Fynn the bodyguard was, a sort of poor man’s werewolf, but I’d assumed the girl was along for another kind of comfort altogether. There must be more to her than that, though, if the old devil was willing to risk her, and she herself. In this weak moonlight she didn’t look quite so pretty, her brow higher and more rounded under the lank hair, her eyes still larger, her chin too weak and narrow for the rest of the face; a hint of malformation, a lingering look of the foetus. The sailors shied away from her, too. Stryge paid them no attention, but went shuffling up the companion onto the foredeck and, standing there in the last moonlight, he began to whistle softly, as if to himself, and stretched out his arm to the skies.
‘Now what’s he on about? demanded Mall, as our party crouched down together behind the rail, uncomfortably close to one of the guns. I couldn’t suggest anything. Run in as the thing was, I was looking down its muzzle and into the ferocious grins of the crew behind, an unnerving sight; I could even smell the peppery sharpness of the powder. Mall was grinning, too.
‘Best stop your ears when they fire, Stephen. And be thankful it’s but an eighteen-pounder. The Chorazin has twenty-fours –’
‘I thought Jyp said we outgunned them!’
‘Aye, they’ve only five a side and a couple of chasers, where we’ve got ten. But five’s still a deal, can they but bring them to bear.’
I considered that for a moment, then decided I didn’t want to. There was something else that wouldn’t go away, something Mall had let slip, and the more I mulled it over, the more my hair bristled. Beside us a spark swirled in the gathering dark, in slow figures of eight like a firefly on a string; I found it incredibly irritating. ‘That guy – does he have to keep on waving that torch thing like that!’
‘The gun captain? That’s his linstock – he must do thus to keep it alight.’
‘Well, I wish to hell he wasn’t so casual about it – not near the cartridges!’ Mall only chuckled. I seethed.
‘Mall … There’s something – I’ve just got to ask it –’
‘Ask, then!’ she hissed. No chuckle now; she sounded every bit as tense as I felt.
‘Those plays – where boys acted the women’s roles. That hasn’t been done for … Mall, were those plays Shakespeare’s?’
‘Who? Oh, Shakspur!’ She sounded surprised. ‘Do they still play’em, then? Aye, some were. All the rage with the gentry, but too many words for my liking! Now your Middleton, your Master Dekker, now, there were play-makers indeed –’ She broke off, her hand light on my shoulder. High above, against the darkening cloud-arch, came a shadow and a white flash, a shape circling down on narrow wings towards the still shadow on the foredeck – a smallish gull. Right on Le Stryge’s upraised arm it landed, still flapping and fluttering nervously, and slowly he clasped it to him and bowed over it, petting it, ignoring its uneasy protests. He glanced up at the moon, and at the high sails of the Wolf merchantman, suddenly much closer. I was shocked to see how fast we were overhauling her. Still crooning over his catch, he shuffled forward to the rail. Suddenly he held up the bird, gleaming in the last rays, and shouted something aloud, sharp and guttural and cruel. Somehow I understood what he was about to do; I half rose, a shout on my lips. But Mall yanked me down, even as the old man flung his arms wide and ripped the hapless bird apart, wing from body.
A low groan of revulsion arose from the sailors. But even as the blood spattered onto the deck, I saw the sails ahead jolt as if some vast hand had slapped at them, and flap empty and useless in the breeze. Then the moonlight dulled and dimmed, and in the shadow that spilled across the maindeck I heard Stryge’s cackle of high-pitched laughter.
Pierce’s bellow drowned it. ‘Belay that, blast your eyes! Now we’ll be on ’em in minutes! Hands ready to go about! Starboard crews – run out your guns!’
With a creak and a crash the ports flew open, and once again that drumming thunder shuddered through the ship. Beside my ear the tackle clattered, the carriage squealed as the straining crew sent that massive weight nosing out into the darkness, as if scenting its distant mark. Handspikes clattered, heaving the heavy barrel up to the right angle and elevation. I hoped the gun captains remembered their orders. There was a brief frantic clinking as wedges were hammered home to hold the aim, and then a silence so abrupt it was frightening. I’d tuned out the usual ship noises; all I could hear was my own breathing, very loud. My mouth tasted gummy and rank; I’d have drunk anything, even that damn brandy. On and on the silence went, the waiting, for what felt like hours, with nothing to do but think. That stroke of cruel magic had upset me horribly; and yet my words with Mall haunted me far worse. It set things boiling in the back of my brain, hopes and fears and odd concerns – and the truths she’d made me face.