‘You needn’t be in any hurry to quit your lodgings, if you don’t want to,’ Da Silva said. ‘We’re mired down in seventeen levels of bureaucracy, as usual. If it weren’t for that we could be out of here tomorrow. Oh, and the fact that there seems to be a werewolf on the loose.’
Watching Harris closely for any reaction, but not really expecting one, he was surprised to see the American’s eyes widen for a bare instant. Now I wonder what that was about? he thought curiously, drawing in smoke.
‘Werewolf, huh?’ drawled the mate. ‘How do they work that one out?’ And he took a cigarette out and lit it. Da Silva smiled faintly, being quite used to reading body language. He raised an eyebrow.
‘The Indian penchant for melodrama, perhaps,’ he suggested, somewhat disingenuously, and shrugged his shoulders.
Harris looked doubtful. ‘They must have a reason, don’t you think, skipper?’
‘Justification, then,’ said the captain, feeling the scar on his cheekbone absently. It still felt strange, a strip of smooth slippery skin. ‘So they wouldn’t have to admit that they weren’t watching a child, they say the wolf that took it had supernatural powers.’
‘A wolf in the town, though?’ Harris said, unconsciously echoing Gomes, and turned away, ostensibly eyeing the crowd at the waterfront.
‘Whatever it is,’ said Da Silva, ‘it’s a convenient excuse for more delays. Anyway, Senhor Harris, I’ll send word when I need you.’
‘Right, skipper,’ said the Isabella’s newest crew-member, and took his leave.
The man was shocked when he heard about the werewolf, Da Silva thought. But not surprised to hear me say the word. A drop of sweat ran down his nose, and he wiped at it irritably. Damned stupid climate. The captain took off his eyepatch, his hand encountering damp hair as it cleared his head. His shirt was glued to him, and all the folds of his clothes were sodden. I wish to God I was back in Lisbon. Where it gets hot in summer, but you don’t liquefy in it. He rubbed at the patch ineffectually, grimacing.
‘Who was that?’ asked a curious voice by his elbow.
‘New third mate,’ he said, ruffling his son’s hair automatically and finding it as clammy as his own.
‘Oh mãe,’ said Zé disgustedly. ‘Someone else to boss us around.’
‘That’s what ‘prentices are for,’ Da Silva informed him.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Harris,’ said the captain. ‘He’s an American, so I expect you’ll be learning a few new swear words.’
Zé grinned at the prospect, and did a little dance round his father. When he had been nine years old, a sailor from Providence, Rhode Island, had taught him to say goddamn — much to Da Silva’s private amusement — and given him a silver dollar, which Zé would not be parted from. ‘When are we sailing? It’s too hot here.’
‘Too hot, too wet, too stuffy, too dirty. I don’t know, Zé. As soon as we can. As soon as all those bloody bureaucrats decide I’ve paid them enough in bribes. Heaven only knows.’ A yawn caught him by surprise. My God, I’m tired, he thought, how did that happen? He wiped his hand over his face, the sweat feeling greasy on his palm and his fingers, then dragged it through his hair, mopping his forehead with his shirtsleeve as it followed through. Zé looked at him and giggled.
‘Your hair looks like a bottle-brush,’ he said.
‘Haven’t you got any studying you should be doing?’ asked the captain, ominously, and his son took the hint and scuttled off. Da Silva watched him go, a small smile on his face. He hadn’t really wanted the boy to follow in his footsteps at all, but it had soon become obvious to both him and his wife that Zé would get himself to sea by fair means or foul. So they had concluded that the safest thing had been to take him on the Isabella where he could at least be watched some of the time. And Da Silva had to admit that he was doing well.
He lit another cheroot, put the thoughts of Emilia — whom he missed every day — that Zé had awakened firmly out of his mind, and wondered what he should do about the werewolf.
Hell and damnation, why is the skipper interested? What does he know? How can he know?
Get yourself under control, Harris. He don’t know aboutyou. There’s something else going on in this burg. Some one else, that don’t care about killing people. Well, good God Almighty, life is cheap here. Ain’t that the truth.
But that ain’t the point, is it? The point is, I can’t tie myself up no more, case someone finds me and kills me before I can do anything about it. Kills me for something I ain’t done. But Jesus, what happens then, when the beast comes to me? Can I control it?
I remember. I remember. It was the George Washington from Liverpool to Riga. Freezing Baltic waters. Rime on the sheets. Danny O ‘Leary got pneumonia and nearly died. We put into port a day before it iced over, and there we were, stuck fast till she thawed. And wolves in the streets, leaving paw prints in the snow and yellow stains of piss on the frozen buildings. Marking out their territory. Hell, folks said they was even out on the sea, running on the ice.
So what the devil was a sailor supposed to do, take up woodcarving?
It was poker was my undoing, like my Ma always said it would be. Except I don’t reckon she meant it like it happened. I didn’t go with no hookers, didn’t want to catch the pox. Didn’t go drinking, at least not too much, rots your brain. Took care of my brain and my prick but lost my goddam humanity when I stepped outside for a smoke to clear my head.
Yellow eyes in the night, hot and yellow as molten gold poured into a mould, the same deep fierce glow. Lips, black, stretching back from a mouth full of fangs. Smell of decaying blood, new blood.
And I’m dead.
Only I’m not.
Then, a month later, pain. Excruciating pain. My spine is broken, my legs and arms dislocated, even my skull feels like it’s exploding. I fall to the floor screaming. Some bones stretch, some shrink, everything re-forms. It feels like there’s hot lead running in my veins. It hurts so much I have no more breath to cry out, and it goes on and on and on and a furnace heat builds until I think I’m really on fire, with actual flames shooting from my skin. But I can’t see them burning because when I open my eyes their perception has changed, the entire concept of seeing has altered.
I don’t see with my eyes any more, but with my nose. Sight is no more than shadows. The sense of smell is totally overwhelming, the scent of blood irresistible.
I’m a wolf.
So I go hunting.
José Da Silva, known to everyone — except to his mother when he was in for a hiding — as Zé, sat in the ‘prentices’ cabin and pretended to study. But however convincing this outward appearance of diligence, he was actually rerunning the last part of his father’s conversation with Senhor Harris in his head, over and over.
The two men had been talking in English, of course, but Zé had inherited the captain’s gift for languages and already spoke it pretty well himself. Added to which an addiction to penny dreadfuls, a form of literature to which O’Rourke, the ship’s doctor, had introduced him, had made him familiar with words like werewolf.
Zé had long suspected that his father knew rather more about uncanny things than he ever let on, and this seemed to confirm it. Except that he hadn’t said it was actually a werewolf, had he? But that was uninteresting. The possibility of real werewolves was, on the other hand, decidedly intriguing, not to say exciting.