Pirate Religion

Captain Halliday strode across the chamber to where his dogsbody, Perkins, was crouched over a desk with an eyeglass screwed in and his raggedy tonsure framing a bent head so that he looked like a miserly London clerk. ‘Well, what do we have thus far?’ said Halliday. Perkins read him the letter. It detailed the journey at that point in time, how well the Captain thought that the leaving ceremonies had gone (not well; he was a man of intense and stringent habits, almost religiously ascetic, and disliked any bent towards emotion, scolding the cabin boys for their womanly tears and trepidations) and whether the men seemed to be as enthusiastic about their current work as appropriate.

‘Good’ said Halliday, ‘squirrel it away and let’s have a drink.’

Perkins was surprised, though didn’t show it, having been trained since boyhood to fully sublimate his personality and human reactions should hell itself break through the floor and drag his master down. He merely unscrewed his monocle, placed it in the breast pocket of his ratty black jacket, rolled up the document like an ancient scroll and placed it with the others in their respective pigeon holes - the honeycomb edifice effectively forming the captain’s log - and poured two glasses of the captain’s favoured sherry. He poured himself the smaller share, less out of deference but more because if he drank as often and as much as his master did, he’d lack the piercing insight and reflexes required of his type of servant. He’d learned this lesson the hard way when as a young man he was caned for winding up drunk in a rose bush when the lord’s son he chaperoned took him to a local hostelry in search of liquor and women.

‘It’s been a hard ruddy week’ said Halliday, accepting the glass without thanks, downing it in one gulp, and returning it to Perkins for more. Perkins refilled and this time Halliday took it a little more temperately. ‘First Lord Runnymede, that damnable blunderbuss, sets about “inspecting” us. I tell you, Perkins, if he wasn’t a Lord I’d knock him flat.’ Perkins believed him. Halliday started each morning like a barrel of gunpowder, dormant for now but soon to explore, and ended each night as red and beaded with moisture as a prize-winning side of gammon.

He was rotund and alcoholic, though it would have been foolish to suppose that he was therefore slow on his feet or not long for this world. Perkins guessed that he was the type to live into his eighties and maybe even beyond just on primitive rage alone. He had a vision of him then, as Halliday stood there framed by the light through the port window, in a “stand down” pose, one hand in his jacket and over his round belly. Perkins saw him as a 92-year-old Methuselah, raddled with gout, one leg missing below the knee, struggling forward on a wheelchair as his one good eye - the other a dull green yolk suspended in milk - fixed itself angrily on a point in the distance.

He’d be just as frightening and powerful then as he is now, thought Perkins. Captain Erasmus Franklin Halliday was a force, but not of nature. He was almost anti-nature, a supernatural canker that jealously guarded its life.

He was looking at his finally empty glass. ‘Another, sir?’

‘Mm? No. No… mustn’t indulge too far. Sloppy, you know. Bring us some of that weak ale, though.’ Perkins obeyed the command and retrieved two pewter tankards which he filled with beer from stout, green glass bottles. He filled his own up half of the way but presented Halliday with a nice frothing pate, the tankard looking like a sour old judge in his horsehair wig. Matches the man, thought Perkins.

Halliday lowered himself into an armchair with rests and legs that terminated in brass, clawed feet. It was his favourite piece of furniture, and it groaned familiarly below his bulk, the hard blue satin a riverbed upon which this male Ophelia reposed. According to cabin boy legend, Halliday had crippled a boy who’d foolishly accepted a dare to sneak into the captain’s room and sit in his chair.

‘The Warlock, they call him’ said Halliday, staring into his beer, and snorted.

‘Yes, sir’ said Perkins, preparing to be the repository of his master’s thoughts. Not really a confidant so much as a wall to be wailed at, a virgin piece of diary paper. ‘Damned if I know what’s it about’ the captain continued. ‘I don’t buy all that gipsy rubbish, though. Crystal balls and tarot cards and whatnot. That’s more Lord Ganymede’s line.’ Lord Ganymede was Halliday’s insulting nickname for Runnymede, an allusion to Zeus’ cupbearer and lover. Any man was at risk of having their masculinity slighted by Halliday, so Perkins didn’t infer much from this. ‘Still, when king and country call… and at the bottom, I’m sure, is rank piracy. We’ll have a job trekking across the cursed place, and who knows what manner of booby traps he’s placed. If I hear man or boy aboard this boat breathe a word of this witchcraft rubbish, though, I’ll have them flogged. That goes for you too, Perkins.’

Perkins didn’t need telling this. He’d taken notes at the meeting where Halliday was informed of his latest assignment. In that high-ceilinged and marble-columned room, far above the streets of a seafaring town, and on whose windowpanes were gathered various meetings of gulls, Lord Runnymede explained the affair alongside three MPs. ‘You’re aware that a year ago a London bishop who was popular and revered in the city turned traitor and disappeared with a consignment of British gold’ he began. Halliday had grunted his assent. ‘Well, it seems that an island nearby to our Caribbean territories has been habited for some time by a pale bearded hermit, who scares away the fishermen that dare to land with mirages affected by witchcraft. Giants in the trees, phantoms, that sort of thing.’

'Native guff. Though I must say, Bishop Wyndham appears to have bested our boys in the navy and military better than a foreign horde could have dreamed about doing' Halliday remarked with a contemptuous curl to his upper right lip. Runnymede stayed still as a statue, understanding intuitively that any perceptible wilt to his manner would be pounced on by Halliday. 'Bishop Wyndham was Lord Moreton's nephew' he said, an ice in his voice to chill a boiling pot.

'Is that supposed to impress me?' replied Halliday. The MPs shifted in their seats like housecats who sense a family row. 'Whomever he is, he's made you look like a Molly with his trousers down.' Runnymede rose to this taunt and seemed ready to swing a glass decanter at Halliday's head, an action which Halliday was rising to parry. The MP to Runnymede's left, however, stayed this action with a hand on his arm. 'Gentlemen, please, behave like such!' he implored. 'This is a serious matter of national dignity and, wit as you are, Halliday, you can at least appreciate that.'

Halliday reseated himself and huffed. 'Bishop Wyndham was popular because he gave hope to the poverty-stricken of London' the MP continued, 'and he was beloved of both crown and parliament because he didn't place the blame on them. When he was commissioned to escort a troop to the king's Caribbean holdings, with a hundred boys from the workhouses in tow, he was trusted, and you would have trusted him too, Halliday. You certainly didn't protest when he made his show at court. You were there too, I recall, when he charmed the seafarer's delegation.'

'Nothing charms me' grumbled Halliday. The MP ignored this. 'None of those boys who went with him have been found. None of the crew have been found. Our best guess is that he's living in his glory on that godforsaken island, that he used his influence over the boys to lead a mutiny that ended up killing a lot of good naval officers, including their captain.'

'Don't worry' said Halliday 'I'll bring him back to England for you.' A dark aspect came over him and turned his countenance to brimstone. 'I just can't promise that he'll have both his eyes.'

***

Billy supposed that he should have been immune to nausea at sea by now, but as the boat swayed and knocked against the ship while it was lowered, he felt as green as a bloated corpse.

It had been a long time since his days serving rummies at the Liverpool docks, where his father ran a seafarer's pub that gave directly onto the bay where ships were moored. The pub catered to a neverending clientele that would roughouse and occasionally kill each other when the sun went down. Billy's mother he couldn't recall very well, his father having kept no portraits, and she had died of a wasting disease when he was five or so. Her love had impressed itself on him, however. Of that which he could remember, there were her anxious eyes, always seeking him out as he toddled about the pub's upstairs garret while she lay reposed on a couch.

His father was a cold and distant man, and there wasn't much emotion from Billy's end when he died. An uncle turned up to run the place and he didn't seem too keen on developing any sort of relationship with his fourteen-year-old nephew, so Billy took the opportunity to fling himself upon a career as a cabin boy.

As the landing boat was sailing towards the shore, he thought about how long it had been since he'd departed the docks. He'd lied about his age when signing up for cabin work, with help from his uncle, and there was no one there to wave him off. The other boys had mothers who'd waved them away with tears in their eyes, and even those without family had had a girl they'd been intimate with to act distraught at their leaving for the ocean blue. Billy didn't mind his aloneness too much. He wondered what a friend he'd made on board would have thought of the island now that they were here. The lad, Tommy, had fallen overboard while drunk on grog stolen from the galley, or at least that was the official story. Billy knew better since Tommy had confided in him about his intense melancholia. He was nineteen but seemed to be constantly weighed down by thoughts of death and futility. 'There ain't no resurrection' he said, 'nothing that's waiting for us.'

Maybe he's happier dead, down on the ocean floor, thought Billy. He took in the wide beach and the rocks and the tall palm trees and felt the sweat beading on his forehead as the Caribbean sun beat mercilessly down. The cabin boys were kept in the dark about a lot of things, but they weren't stupid, and they had ears that remained open as they bore objects past doors. 'We're hunting the bishop' said one lad. ('Please, you're only good for flogging it!' some wag rejoined.) Regardless, the official task was collecting native fruits for import back to Britain, and Billy foresaw many months ahead of shimmying up trees in the burning heat, hacking off the goods with a machete. There were worse ways to kill time in the Navy, which he'd learned on seeing a man flogged half to death for mutiny.

He looked back to the ship and saw Perkins sat primly in the last landing boat, a large black bag on his lap. Halliday sat opposite, one hand on his cane and the other gesticulating wildly as he ranted to Perkins.

***

The palm trees at night were not comforting bedfellows. Billy had expected that his limbs would be too exhausted from an afternoon scaling trees and harvesting guava to sneak out and spy on his superiors, but come midnight he found himself doing just this. The wind through the trees sounded like whispers, and the voices of humans even in conspiracy were comforting compared to this. Captain Halliday, Perkins, and a small phalanx of military men, all of whom had dined together on board away from the main rabble, were huddled around a map while from a rock beside them was hung a skull-and-crossbones. Billy tried but couldn't hear what they were saying, beyond once when Halliday raised his voice just enough to broadcast the words 'bloody pirates!'

He returned to his tent and climbed into bed, only to hear some sleepless time later a rustling in the woods. Billy didn't know if he was dreaming. But in his mind's eye, he saw a man in full bishop's robes moving through the dense undergrowth of the humid and thick Caribbean jungle, seeming to move with the celestial grace of an angel whose feet are not evolved to walk across crass earthly sod, were not evolved at all but carved from starlight.

Billy decided he was dreaming when he stood and passed from the tent, past his sleeping comrades who hardly stirred. As he walked through the jungle towards the man in the bishop's robes, Billy saw in the trees around him pirates, some with peg legs and others eyepatches, all of them looking worse for wear, not an unblemished face among them, not even on the cabin boys of whom a lot would have been below age, a few just fourteen. Pustules marked their exposed areas, coarsening their foreheads, cheeks, and arms whose sleeves were rolled up to nubby elbow joints. The bandanas about their heads and clothes adorning their emaciated frames were soaked through with sweat, many scummed by constant application to bleeding, pustulant wounds. Their aspects spoke disease and pain, yet across each face was a smile so broad it would seem to spread beyond the limits of the head.

Billy stopped and turned away from them to look straight ahead, to where Bishop Wyndham stood at the top of a short, rude staircase carved before a crumbling stone temple whose central portal appeared to depict some strange nautical leviathan. Buried deep in its sockets were two minuscule rubies, which despite their size could be seen glinting in the darkness. Billy thought that he'd been dreaming, but all of a sudden he could feel his gripping the foliage that clustered about the temple steps and the hard jungle wind caressing his face. Bishop Wyndham had clearly been a good-looking man once, but now his flesh was just as degraded by the same agents that assailed the band of pirates who stood grinning among the trees.

When the Bishop spoke, his voice had a calm to it that was frankly inhuman. No mortal voice could sound so at peace with itself. 'You have a question' he stated. His expression was one of amused tolerance like a favourite uncle teaching a nephew some life lesson.

'Why do they look so happy' Billy asked. It was the first question on his mind, for reasons he didn't understand yet. The Bishop laughed and was joined in chorus by the men among the trees. 'My boy' he said, 'what you call pain, we call proximity.' As it happened, 'proximity' was a word that Billy understood. Tommy, who'd had a good education before starting his brief career as a sailor, had taught him it during below decks mathematics lessons that Billy had asked for.

'Proximity to what?' he said.

'The True Cross, my son!'

So this was a matter of religion. Billy supposed it would be, given that Wyndham was a bishop, after all. Billy had little time for religion and preferred to take it for granted and think about more practical things. But something in the bishop's manner and the sheer strangeness of the situation, the pirates and boys in the trees covered in disease though grinning beatifically about an ancient portal, held his attention to its fullest. He wondered if they would cause him harm if he tried to return to the camp. He decided to let his current host take the lead and hope for the best. 'I don't understand' he observed simply.

Wyndham smiled with such messianic compassion that even a practical agnostic like Billy felt himself melting in the shine of that emotional expression. He hadn't seen the like of such kindness in a gaze cast upon him since his mother died. 'Of course you don't, my son, but you will' said Wyndham. He walked to the portal and Billy followed.

The tentacles of the stone leviathan started to rattle in their moorings and retract into the portal chambers. The portal opened, moving slowly but easily on its axis until it revealed a giant gaping maw that emitted the sour breath of centuries, cobwebs and vines hanging from its upper lip. Wyndham gestured to his new young friend and Billy moved with less reluctance than he thought he would. The maw on penetration revealed an elaborate descending staircase carved rudely into the island's base rock. The pirates, cabin boys, and former servants of His Majesty's Navy brought up the rear of the procession, emerging from the woods on their peg legs and with their many dripping sores. Just as Billy thought they'd be descending forever into darkness, a flicker of light in the distance revealed a sconce held aloft by a carving of the native Caribbean, who seemed to be in a death struggle with another man carved below. The detail of the work stunned Billy, who'd never seen sculpture so fine and hadn't thought it possible among the ancient tribes, as the creators of this island tomb seemed to have been members of.

More statuary followed, all of the native Caribbeans in alternating poses of conflict and worship, the latter of a deity not depicted. The descending spiral staircase opened out into a circular chamber, around which a tribal council would once have held meetings.

The coiling serpentine ropes of stone that coiled about each other in the lowermost, circular portion of the floor started to move as if made of flesh and belonging to a creature emerging from its slumber on the ocean floor. A bottomless pit was revealed, and a sound from its depths came up to suggest the deity inside. As it made itself visible on its ascent through the aperture, Billy reflected (before his mind changed unalterably from how it had previously worked) that he didn't know what Christ the Redeemer looked like, exactly. But he was sure that it wasn't like this.