Where was I? Yeah. On me way around the town, taking me time so’s not to run into nobody till I met up with with the supercargo. The more-or-less secret track led around the steep and cliffy south side of the hill, right close to where it weren’t a good idea to put up any more houses, and where most folk don’t go for fear of falling off, ‘cause the path’s ragged in spots, which is why boys and spry men like it. It were too late for me to meet anyone, and anyway, it was one of those spots where if you pass someone, you pretend not to notice, and keep on going.
Seaport town. There’s always stuff what people want that ain’t available in regular daytime stores.
Halfway up and along, I looked back at the harbour to where Wetfoot lay waiting. Her anchor light was glowing yellowy-white, and beyond her I could see dim gleams from the cottages of the sailors’ friends. Closer in, a few fish boats were rafted together alongside one of the wharves, a light moving around where someone was finishing up a long day or getting ready for an early start tomorrow. I wondered if I should be worrying about fishermen catching on to Markab’s and my plan, but I decided that they was likely more interested in fishing.
I sat there listening to the night wind whispering cool enough so’s I was glad of me nice almost-new blue jacket, watching the dark seep up out of the east, turning the water black. I waited until the moon rose and I had enough light to make me way slowly south and west to where the marsh road met the highway near where it crossed the stream. All the time, I was trying to make up me mind how to meet and greet the passengers. I knew roughly where they should be, and I had a password, but I reckoned they was likely to be edgy, and nervous folk with knives can make mistakes.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry. Some time before midnight, I reached the road and started south. I heard me heels echo on the little bridge afore I saw it, and a short bit later, I was into where the pine forest was on either side. It was right dark under the trees, so I slowed down, feeling me way with me feet, stopping every few paces to listen. First time, wind in trees. Second time, same again. Third time, a tiny scream, cut off. Some little critter turning into an owl’s dinner. Two more stops, and I heard something jingling what I knew weren’t no forest sound. Another few steps, listen again, and there was an on-and-off thudding sound mixed in with the jingling, and I knew I was hearing horses what hadn’t been taken out of their harnesses for the night. I was bent over in a patch of moonlight with me nose close to the ground, feeling with me fingers for where the horses had left the road, when low down under the branches I caught a gleam of a fire. I was just about to straighten up, when a whisper stopped me dead.
“What’s the good word?”
Something poked me in the back, so I held right still.
“One chance. Get it right.”
“Tidewalker,” I whispered back. “The ship’s name is Tidewalker.”
Then I was looking straight into a little candle lantern held at eye level. It weren’t all that bright, but after a few hours picking me way by moon and starlight, I couldn’t see nothing of the man who held it. He looked me over, taking in me nice new nautical rig, and he grunted.
“You have a name?”
“Angel.”
He grunted again, this time like if had it been some other time and place, he might’a laughed.
“Follow me, Angel.”
I stumbled along behind him, catching me toes in roots and rocks. He led me to the fire I’d glimpsed, which was in the middle of a clearing. At first, I thought there was nobody there, until I saw a hunched-over shape of a big, square man sitting on a log. He had a huge head of hair and a thick beard. Bushy isn’t enough of a word for that beard. It was a forest hanging down over a chest big enough for two men. But it was the eyes that held me. Bright in the firelight, shiny-black. They didn’t blink.
“His name’s Angel. He knew the password.”
The big man did not even nod. I was still waiting for his eyelids to move when he spoke.
“Are you a righteous or an evil angel?”
He spoke quiet, but his voice boomed like his big chest was an open barrel. I was impressed, but I’d had enough righteousness for the day.
“Able Angel is me name. And what do I call you?” I says, making me voice officer-like and not noticeably humble.
“I am Abner. And you will lead us down to the harbour and your ship.”
“No.”
He blinked. His head turned a point or two to starboard, and his eyes got narrower.
“Why?”
“‘Cause the town knows you’re here and planning to arrive by the marsh road. They’re expecting a raiding party. They caught some poor feller who must have told them you was armed and dangerous. They don’t know you’ve got women and children.”
“Joel.”
“I didn’t hear a name for you to thank, and from the way they were talkin’, Joel is beyond thankin’.”
“Thanking?”
“For telling them where to jump you. Makes it possible for me to take you another way. If’n the rest of yer party can get on the road just about right now, with no lights.”
His shiny black eyes kept staring at me. First off, it were disturbing. Then when he didn’t say nothing, I got to thinking he was wondering whether to trust me, ‘cause I knew the way, and he didn’t. What I’d told him was more than just a change in his plans. It must have crossed his mind that maybe I was only telling part of the truth about the reception committee, and that my job was to lead him and his crew straight into it.
Everything he’d said and hadn’t said told me that he was a man who needed to be in charge of everything, and at that moment, he wasn’t, and he was doing his best to hide it. All he knew was that I was dressed like a fairly important sailor, and that I’d answered with the right ship’s name. It occurred to me that he might be wondering if I would still be singing the same song after someone had worked me over a bit. That idea weren’t comforting. So I squatted down on me heels with the fire between us, and our heads on the same level. I looked into his shiny, black, unblinking eyes, and spoke plain and direct, like the officer and gentleman I so surely wasn’t.
“Abner, let me tell you what I propose.”
For the first time, his eyes blinked.
“When you come out of the woods onto the road again, there’s the marsh road to starboard -- on your right hand. We’re going past it, around the back of the town, along the road that’s in the lee of the hill what’s topped by the church. We start out going north and curl around eastwards, until we come to the river. A couple of hours walk for a man, more if there’s women and children. There’s a do-it-yourself ferry big enough for four horses and a wagon, with room for a couple dozen people if they scrunch up close. We take the trip across – it’s not much more than twice as far as you could throw a stone -- and then follow the road on the other side to the beach, where me captain will have boats to take you aboard W...Tidewalker.”
For a few heartbeats he looked at me, and I looked back.
“I understand,” he said, and his words carried a lot of freight. He was relieved, I could tell. So much so, that I knew I could go on asking questions.
“Abner, tell me, where are your … er… crew? We have no time to go looking for and rounding up stragglers. And they have to be quiet.”
“They’re close. And they know how to do that.”
“The women and children, too?”
His big head went up and down.
“The family will be on the road soon enough. See to it, Jonas.”
The feller who’d guided me to the fire nodded, the orange light from the flames showing me a big hooky nose with a face around it that was all angles and shadows. He nodded, and disappeared into the dark. I could hear small rustling noises and occasional whispers. Soon I glimpsed people moving out from the trees and bushes into the edges of the firelight, what there was of it, and on through the trees. Someone got the horses pulling a heavy wagon towards the road. Abner picked up a candle lantern, got slowly to his feet, and waved a big hand at me to follow him. Behind us, I heard hissing as they dowsed the fire.
Eventually, they was all of a piece and on the road waiting to get started. I joined Jonas, Abner’s lead hand, and we went down one side of the line and up the other, counting by the light of Abner’s little lantern. I made it five men besides Abner and me, twelve or so women, about a dozen boys and girls, all of them somewhat more than six years, none of them more than twelve or so. In the dark, whatever they was wearing looked mostly grey, with a few even harder-to-see in black. The young ones was bunched together around the women, on account of them being ma’s. A few of the older children were helping out, but most was standing clear in twos and threes. All of the girls wore shawls and kept their heads down. Some of the older ones were holding the hands of the littler ones. The boys wore caps pulled low. I couldn’t see faces, but they all was all standing quietly, like they was too tired and sleepy and scared to do anything else. As Jonas came past, counting, a couple of them shied away, like they was staying out of reach, same as I used to do when me Da was around.
When we’d got back to the wagon and the two big cart-horses on the head of the line, a movement caught me eye. On the tailgate, back of a pile of stuff what I couldn’t see ‘cause it were under a tarpaulin and in the dark, was a girl dangling her feet, wearing a dress that had been white once, with a baby on her knees all wrapped up in a blanket. Her hair gleamed in the light, but I couldn’t make out the colour beyond that it weren’t black. She was singing real soft in the little one’s ear. Jonas took one step in front of me and clipped her one across the ear. In the light of his lantern I saw her hair fly up, pale and shiny, and her eyes flashed white. She gasped, and slid off the tailgate, the baby cuddled close to her on one skinny hip. There was something odd about the two of them, because she weren’t old enough to be no ma, that’s for sure.
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I opened me mouth to ask why she couldn’t ride on the wagon, but Jonas got in his whisper first.
“Let her walk. Maybe we’ll lose her along the way. She’s no good to anyone, nor the kid, neither. Sure to die soon, anyway. Don't know why Abner let her tag along after the mother croaked."
Well, that struck me as rare mean and nasty, but short of knifing the bastard and rolling his body into the ditch, there weren’t nothing I could do, and besides, the girl and the baby had disappeared into the shadows. So we went on to join the wagon and horses where Abner was waiting to give the word to get started, which, soon as he had climbed aboard the wagon, he did.
That were the beginning of a long, slow walk around the edges of the town. It turned out to be the longest night I can recall; longer than any night watch I ever stood, then or later, ‘cause I remember all of it, not like at sea, where the waves rub the details smooth, and one night watch is much the same as the last. I was out in front of the horses, holding a dim lantern that showed Abner just enough of the road for him to keep the wagon on it. Behind me, I heard the horses’ big hooves softly thudding onto the grass strip down the middle, the wagon creaking, the occasional whimper or whisper from the women and kids, and from time to time a muttered curse from the men what were strung out behind, keeping the whole sorry procession on the move.
As the night wore on, I remember grappling with something new to me: I was split up and down the middle of me own thoughts, with the two bits tugging in different directions. Never happened to me before. Up to then, it had been me looking out for me, ‘cause sure as night follows day, nobody else did -- except Al and Smitty, and they was dead. Y’see, looking out for me had been so time-and-me-consuming, I didn’t have nothing left over for anyone else, not even the memories of poor old Al and Smitty, who both deserved more than the deep six. So that was why it was all so strange to me as I walked the night away, followed by a couple dozen folks I’d not even heard of a day earlier. I just couldn’t understand why I had this great big squirmy feeling that I should do something about the skinny girl and the baby she was looking after like she had no thought for her own self. And at the very same time as I was thinking I should do something about her, I was also telling meself to get the job done like the Master had ordered and I had helped plan, and never mind the supercargo beyond delivering them, or at least most of them. But as I was walking and thinking, I wasn’t at all that happy with what I’d seen. I was also more than a piece worried by what I hadn’t seen what had come before, like the ma dying and them keeping the skinny girl on, but not taking proper care of her.
Now you got to know that I was least happy with Markab, him being ready to cut and run from his agreement the moment the deal looked like it were getting dodgy. With Markab, I had the sass to come up with an idea that would keep him in the game. With Abner, I had no such lever or lucky idea to make him to show some consideration for the girl and the baby. So I kept on walking, hoping, and arguing with myself to no good conclusion. Abner had the wagon, he’d put Jonas in charge of the rank and file strung out behind. I wasn’t going to convert Jonas to me way of thinking, and no way I could go over his head to Abner. Each time I circled around the same uncomfortable thoughts, I kept on coming back to those wide blue eyes on the skinny girl who was looking after what must have been her baby brother or sister.
As the sky brightened with the false dawn, we started down the slope that led to the river. Mist hung low to the water’s edge, so that we could only see to the end of the ferry dock. Right where the ferry wasn’t.
“It ain’t here," said Jonas. “Now you got a problem."
He sounded like he was pleased. I ignored him and began hauling on the recovery line while the horses’ hooves clopped and thudded on the wood of the dock. I could feel Jonas and Abner watching me, but I paid them no mind, ‘cause I could feel the ferry swinging across the river towards me. All I had to do was maintain a steady pressure, and the current would do the work. But I wasn’t going to tell them that, nor that I was wondering why the ferry was on the other side, and coming to the conclusion that the sailors must have been so keen and the sailors’ friends so willing that they’d all decided to make a night of it. Then the ugly old square-ended barge of a ferry ghosted out of the mist and bumped against the dock, and I was busy getting the ramp down and the horses and the people aboard without no feet nor fingers getting squashed. But while I was doing me fussing around, I was looking for the skinny girl, and not seeing her nowhere. Finally, as I got the ramp up and the folks standing clear, I leaned on the big steering oar to shove her bow out so’s the current got on her port side to push her away from the dock and angle her across the river into the mist. While I could still see, I kept me eyes on the dock, hoping that there would be the skinny girl, but I didn’t see nothing but ripples on the water and the black wood of the dock getting fuzzier in the mist as we swung away.
I decided she must have got lost along the way. I pictured her in me mind’s eye, limping along behind, falling, and not being able to get up. And I was ashamed that I wasn’t there when that was happening, and guilty that I’d pushed off in the ferry before seeing whether I couldn’t do anything about her. It left me with a hole in meself, ‘cause I hadn’t done nothing when I might have, and the more I knew I wasn’t going back to make it better, the worse I felt. So I leaned on the steering oar and looked at me feet while the ferry swung away from the dock and the mist thickened around us.
Then I heard horses’ hooves clomping on the dock, invisible ashore, and a lot of voices talking at the same time.
“That was close,” said Abner softly, turning to look back over the load on the wagon. The women and children started whispering.
“Quiet,” he said.
And they were -- just like that. If I hadn’t had so much to do, I’d ‘a been wonderstruck, but I was right busy with the steering oar, trying to get that barge of a ferry across the river as quick as I could. It was a good thing Abner had silenced his people, because otherwise I might not have heard a shout from the dock we had just left.
“Angel!”
You can bet I swung around right quick, but not before I saw Abner point at me, and all four of his men push past the women to get to me. I very briefly considered taking a header over the side before things could get worse, but then we all heard another shout, this time through the mist from the other side of the river.
“I'm here, and we got em!” yelled a voice I knew right away was me Da.
“Good work, Angel,” came the first voice, and then louder. “Right, you in the ferry. You’re stuck. Go on to the other side and you’ll get shot. Give up. We’re going to haul you back over here.”
“No you won't,” I said, and cut the recovery lines, letting the ends drop into the water.
Abner’s men were almost on me, so I climbed over the top of the wagon, talking as I went.
“Don’t fret, Abner. It’s me Da they’re talking to. Him and me don’t get along. ‘Sides, I got a plan.”
He must have caught on, or maybe he was just surprised, ‘cause he let me slide past him down onto the whippletree between the two big cart-horses, and down into the space between the horses’ heads and the strong post that was the belay for the anchor rope what kept the ferry head-to-current so’s it could swing like a pendulum back and forth across the river.
I got me knife out and started to cut the hawser, but it was thicker than me arm, fog-wet and bar-taught. Still, I gave it me best, even though the mist was lifting and the daylight coming on, and I knew the folks ashore would soon figger out what I was up to, and start shooting. So there I was, bent over, trying to make myself small, when I felt a hand grab me shoulder. I didn’t even lift me head to swear.
“Bugger off, numb ...” I began.
“Out of my way, Angel. Back to your oar.”
It were Abner, and he had an axe. I ducked clear, and as I started back the way I’d come, I heard the axe thunk into the rope. Then something like an angry bee zinged past me head, and I heard the bang. I didn’t stop, and Abner's men had the sense to hunker down below the barge’s wooden sides, where they got the women and young ones to do the same. That was good, ‘cause they weren’t getting in me way or trying to nobble me, but on the other hand, when I arrived at the steering oar, there I was alone and standing up, as much a target as I had been at the other end.
Another bang, and one of the horses screamed and started kicking, but that wasn’t my worry, because I saw the water wasn’t flowing past the ferry anymore. Abner and his axe had done the job, and we were being carried by the current, floating down the river and out into the harbour. Just as I was thinking that we were probably out of range of me Da’s pistol, the dawn mist cleared away like someone had planned it all along. They could see us, we could see them, and when I took a quick look for Wetfoot, there she was, boats in the falls, getting ready to pick us up from the beach where we weren’t, and weren’t going to be, neither. Out of the corner of me eye, I saw someone up at the bow on anchor watch start waving and jumping about, and there was a faint yell of “boat ahoy!”
Behind us, men were shouting at each other from both sides of the river -- a sure recipe for nothing happening for a while. But they weren’t important anymore, so long as I got the next bit right, that is.
I leaned on the steering oar, shoving it as far as I could to port, or what I hoped would be port, when I got the scabby sided barge turned around so’s me and the steering oar was both in the stern. Slowly, she swung around until we were drifting sideways into the harbour, losing speed and steerage way as the fresh water of the river mixed with the sea. I levered down on the loom of the oar to pick it out of the water, swing it back and take another bite at turning the blunt-ended box of a boat around, but the sweep was old, long and water-heavy, so it caught on the surface.
“Could use some help here,” I sung out.
“Help him Jonas,” said Abner.
His voice was no more than what a feller would use to call for a beer in a tavern, but it were better than a full-on shout, ‘cause it got the lean and rangy fellow to me side quicker than it takes me to tell yer. So we pushed and shoved together until we had to ease off ‘cause the oar was bending something frightening. But we brought her around and heading roughly at Wetfoot, where now I could see signs that they was beginning to catch the drift of what we were about.
For a while, it looked like we were going on past and heading out to sea, then what was left of the current took a twirl that carried us so far sideways that I feared we’d end up draped across Wetfoot'sbow. So did the folks aboard. Some of them had heaving lines to pull us close, some had boat hooks and fenders to push us away before we did damage, ‘cause that barge of a ferry was a heavy, waterlogged tub, built to last by folk who were interested in strong, not swift, least of all nimble.
Well, by now you guessed that we made it, and handsomely. We slid past the bowsprit, caught the lines they threw us, and laid alongside like it were something we’d all practiced for years. Soon the supercargo were swarming up the scrambling nets, and the crew had the mizzen gaff rigged as a davit to hoist the horses and wagon on board. I stayed in the ferry to encourage the folks to climb, and then to place the slings under the wagon. When I looked at the horses, wondering how I’d deal with them, there was Abner, getting them out of harness like he did it every day.
Up went the wagon, and then back down onto the deck between the two after masts. Then we went to work on the horses, and that was something else to see how Abner calmed them down, even the one what me Da had shot. Up they went, their big eyes rolling and their legs dangling like rag dolls. And then Abner looked at me, and I looked back, and we both grinned, like two men who know they’ve done a right fine job. Then we slipped the lines and climbed up the scrambling net to the ship’s deck in time to hear the Master order the anchor broken clear of the bottom, the main and jib hoisted, and the barge left to drift wherever it wanted to go. I heard distant cursing from the shore, and very satisfying that was, too.
I was enjoying the moment, looking around at everyone but me working, pleased with how they were taking more than a few looks at me new clothes, and casting me practiced nautical eye at how they were securing the horses and wagon where they’d readied space ahead of the mainmast for deck cargo, right next to where they’d fixed up a makeshift pen for the horses, when I saw the edge of the tarpaulin lifted up by a thin arm, and two heads looking out.
I was beside the wagon in a heartbeat. It was the skinny girl. She had copper-coloured hair, and her eyes were blue-green like the open sea in sunlight. She was having a bit of a job getting to the deck with the little one hanging on to her, so I made meself useful. I took hold of the baby, and felt at once that she was bigger than I’d thought, and as plump as the girl was skinny. She didn’t smell too good, and she sure didn’t want to be held by no strange man, but she didn’t cry. The moment I set her on her feet, she had one hand holding the skinny girl’s dress and the other one in her mouth, looking at me through wide blue eyes over her fat little fist.
I was that pleased, I laughed out loud.