The Unfinished Land Read online

  The sailors knew a little English, and as they led him to a cage under the overhang of the stern castle, followed by the youngest boy, they tried out their few words, as if seeking his approval of their pronunciation. “Bastard, asshole, thou donkey—thou monkey dick!”

  Reynard nodded and smiled.

  After the sailors locked the cage, the old man brought him a bowl of lentils and vegetables soaked in oil, not butter. He ate with his fingers. The old man went away again, and now sailors crowded around.

  “I know thou is good lad,” one sailor attempted.

  “Él es rubio,” said another, with a cackle. “Él prefiere los pelirrojos.” His puzzlement set them back and forth with each other until the old man returned. Despite his rags, the old man seemed to be respected.

  The sailors, bored, left them to talk alone.

  “They remark thou hast red hair,” the old man said.

  “My hair is black,” Reynard said.

  The old man shook his head. “Sea-bleached, then. No doubt from terror. Mayhaps it will grow out black. I have told el capitán thou’rt son of a fisherman and know’st the waters north to Iceland. Make me not a liar!”

  “I know some of the coasts and waters off France and Flanders, and some of Ireland,” Reynard said as he ate. His stomach was giving him pains.

  “Hast thou fished with Basques? With Dutch?”

  “My uncle fished with Basques off Flanders and Portugal,” Reynard said. “No Dutch.”

  “Thou speak’st Basque?”

  Reynard made a face.

  “French?”

  “No.”

  “Gypsy? Roma?” the old man asked, doubtful.

  Reynard shook his head, unsure—his grandmother had never liked the name or judgment of “Gypsy,” assuming as it did an origin in Egypt and a clannish, outlaw nature—but was not Tinker’s Cant touched by Roma?

  “English!” the old man concluded, with a wry twist of his lips. “Well, el maestro is afraid, and el capitán saith little but frowneth much. We have wandered at sea ten days without wind. And even before the battle, we were stuck in this wallowing tub of shit for over two months! Thou seest plain our galleon is sad. The soldiers never chanced to get ashore. The battle, the storms, the currents . . .”

  “Your guns sank my boat,” Reynard said. “You killed my uncle and our crew. They knew the sea better than I.”

  “Many ships and sailors now grace the Lord’s deep,” the old man said. “I think maybe the planning not so good. But say nothing of this to el maestro or el capitán.”

  Reynard’s strength was slowly returning, and with it things he had tried to forget—wild winds and pounding waves, shots and fire, screams as his uncle and the crew tried to keep the hoy behind the galleons and away from the guns of the swift Spanish pinnaces. The hoy had been built for cargo, not war, and her four old guns had been mounted in all the wrong places, while a galleass, fierce in the dark gray light of that horrible noon, as the tide reversed and all the Spanish ships seemed to flee in their direction, came abreast and let loose with the scattered shot that put an end to everyone but Reynard . . .

  He lay back, shoulders against the rough bars, caged like a bear. It was said that the Queen liked to watch stags baited by dogs, and bears as well. There were dogs on this ship—big dogs. Reynard could hear them barking and growling. Mastiffs, he thought. Perhaps they belonged to the gentleman, el capitán.

  But what kept his eyes from closing was fear of the living fog that had dropped no water into his sail and now followed all these sailors and soldiers northwest—to where?

  Slowly he pieced together fragments of those long-ago tales his father had told him, of haunted seas and strange lands, and of the ring of seven islands at the top of the world. “Your grandmither, bless her and all she knows, tells me they are called Tir Na Nog, and they are places where mortals can live forever, and where gods, goddesses, and monsters roam according to their own laws. I have never been there, thanks be to God, but old fishermen who have, and told tales in mine youth, as I tell you now, spake of a slow, relentless storm that pulls and pulls, like a snake of wind and water, sweeping them north and west until there is no escape—all the way to where the wind goeth to die, and sailors with it. Some would say the nearest isle is a great land hidden beyond that storm, that none but demons should visit! So they say, and your grandmither as well . . . But we are sailors, and know teat from twaddle, do we not, boy?”

  And he remembered, as if his father were alive again, him dandling a much smaller Reynard by both hands, and the large man’s laughter, the sweetest sound, silent now for seven years but alive in memory.

  “But remember this, all respect to our kin and the good people they know!” His father had cackled, lifting him high. “Old seamen fart loudest on shore. Keep your wits, lad, and leave the dead to find passage to where the wind sleeps, for only they are allowed to fish there, and they catch nought but monsters—and there be no market for monsters in Southwold.”

  * * *

  The old man brought him a small bowl of peas and sodden biscuit, this time with a slice of half-cooked carrot. Reynard was grateful for anything.

  “I had a boy of mine own,” the old man said, sitting beside the cage and watching him. “A son, a wife, and a daughter. They gave me joy and solace for twenty years, in the Philippines. All dead now. I am far too old, boy.”

  The look he gave Reynard was strangely hopeful, but then the old man reached into his own mouth and wiggled a tooth.

  The day darkened into night. Only then did the fog part, but beneath the upper deck’s overhang, Reynard saw little but a black wedge interrupted by a sliver of moon.

  * * *

  As morning painted the sky gray, the old man opened the cage door. “Come. el maestro says that, having fished here, thou may’st tell us what sort of animal doth follow our ship.” Then he looped rope around Reynard’s chest and neck, knotted the two loops, and led him to the hind castle and up two flights of steps to the far jutting peak of the poop. Here, three sailors and a soldier clung to the rail with white-knuckled fists, watching the ocean behind. All four crossed themselves.

  “There,” the old man said, pointing down.

  Reynard looked into the gray-green churn swirling around the rudder. He shivered, as he always did looking into the deeps. “I see nothing.”

  The sailors pointed and jabbered. As the morning brightened, the old man said, “Water here is fresh. No salt. Are we at the mouth of a river?”

  “I know not,” Reynard said. The sailors started jabbering again and pointing, and now Reynard did see something beneath the waves, pale green, patterned like the wash itself, undulating, serpentine—neither fish nor shark nor any whale he had ever heard of. His first impression was that it had a pair of arms, and he thought it could be a mermaid—though he had never believed in such—but then, as it swam to the surface and, after thudding against the rudder, vanished with a splash, he saw the “hands” at the ends of the arms were more like claws, the long tail was segmented like a lobster’s, and what parts he saw stretched at least fifteen feet.

  The old man said, “It would board and eat us. The sailors hath piked it twice and shot it with a crossbow, sin efecto, sin hacer daño.”

  Reynard shook his head and bit his lip. What did he know about lobsters that tried to board a ship? Nothing. But curiosity had taken over his fear. He was almost eager to know what this thing was capable of, and what it meant. He stared down at the waves, with an expression half grimace and half grin, trying to see below their wash and curl. The sailors watched the shape with wide, unhappy eyes. Then it slipped aft in the ship’s wake and vanished in rocky breakers to the starboard side.

  Lookouts called that they were passing small islands jutting from the sea, capped with shrubs. The old man repeated in English. One larger island to larboard boasted a decent tree, some kind of twisted conifer with dangling cones as big as a man’s head.

  Now Cardoza, el capitán himself, join
ed them on the afterdeck, accompanied by a harquebusier and two musket men. He finished strapping on his sword and cast a side glance at Reynard, then asked the old man, el viejo, if the boy was of use. Before the old man could answer, one soldier with a musket called el capitán’s attention to the island’s lone conifer. A skinny, twisted sack hung from the middle branches, as long as two tall men, striped and spotted red and black, catching sunlight like dark silk and reflecting sparks of gold. All observed in silence. One harquebusier said that in the New World, Indians hung their dead in trees. Another observed the same was true in the far east, where other sailors had been, though not him. The old man translated, but, like his mother, Reynard was quick at languages and already had the sense of their words. Truly the Spanish empire was vast, though likely Drake or Hawkins had been to these places as well.

  The bigger island fell behind. There were no people visible on it, and the waves pounding the sharp rocks around its base were fierce, cutting and roiling the water and spraying up to land on his lips—fresh water indeed, whatever that implied. A low fog closed behind, but the watch cried out there was land justo delante—dead ahead. At the jagged, echoing clash of breakers, more sailors scrambled into the rigging, struggling to bring the ship about, to slow or stop its headlong plunge.

  Reynard was distracted and only heard part of what the old man was murmuring to Cardoza. “Es posible que él puede ayudar con las lenguas bárbaras.” Did the old man mean that Reynard might be useful as a translator? That was even less likely than his talent for geography. But his grandmother’s words came back again, words so familiar . . .

  And then the great hull slammed to an abrupt halt. Men flew from the rigging and the masts, onto the deck, overboard.

  And a horse screamed, then another, not far behind him, perhaps in a stable or a cabin.

  Back to the cage he went, tied up and left alone while the ship became frantic with activity. The galleon could not get free—it had beached itself, and waves seemed to drive it farther onto the shore—waves and something the sailors were calling, yelling it out, actually: “La tierra respira.”

  They thought the land was breathing.

  Reynard drew up his knees. The breezes that reached him were chill and smelled of forest. His pulse quickened.

  ¿Irlanda o Islandia?

  * * *

  THE OLD MAN returned an hour later, wearing a greatcoat too large by half for his thin frame—a greatcoat and a sort of crested watch cap that made him look like a scrawny gray cat. “They say we are cursed,” he muttered. “What think’st thou? Curse or blessing?” He smiled, revealing the few rotten snags left on his gray-pink gums. “I shall inform el capitán thou hast true knowing.”

  “I know nothing!” Reynard cried, angry now that it had all come to this, that, Earth’s trembling aside, they must have come to the Irish coast, or at the worst a French beach, and that he would soon be shot or cut to pieces or hanged. “I do not wish to be here!”

  He did not add, I am afraid! Because in fact, strangely, he was not very afraid. This place had aspects of a dream, and perhaps it was a dream. In which case, he would soon awaken.

  And if it was not a dream, he felt the possibility of a new chance, a new place not to fear, but to explore and hope to understand! Away from fish, away from Southwold, from his uncle’s tasks—but perhaps closer to his grandmother . . .

  “Not a wish I can grant,” the old man said, and gave him a look that might have carried irritation—but also a touch of wonder. He opened the cage and untied the ropes. “But I can share a little more freedom.”

  Reynard got up, legs cramping, and stumbled onto a deck crisscrossed by men carrying boxes and barrels, and one leading a horse—a fine horse, a gentleman’s horse, caparisoned as if for battle, with a forehead shield and side plates that would no doubt drown it had it to swim.

  The old man led Reynard under the net, now being rolled back, to the rail, between weaving lines of frantic sailors and soldiers. By now, two more horses had been brought up on deck, rearing and spinning, screaming, adding to the crowd and confusion.

  The ship had grounded on a long beach of black sand and shingle. The crests of the ocean waves were touched with gold by clear morning sun as they rolled between far-spread headlands topped with curling trees, so far off they seemed like bushes. The air was cold but not freezing. How far north had they come?

  Dozens of soldiers and sailors had lowered themselves on ropes and a climbing net and were already walking around the ship, calling out that there was damage—a wide hole in the larboard hull.

  The old man tied a rope around Reynard’s neck. “Stay by me. I am th’one who hath heart for you.”

  Reynard gripped the rope in both hands, twisted it until it burned his neck, and for a moment, considered how he could escape from the Spaniards and even from the old man, to escape and discover this place on his own!

  And to die thyself unfinished.

  That inner voice again, not quite his grandmother—and not quite the man with the white shadow.

  “My head is truly haunted,” he murmured.

  The old man heard this. “I share that concern,” he said, and raised his wrinkled hand. “Stay alert,” he advised, “and do nothing rash.”

  Cardoza seemed to want to stay and explore. The gentleman’s horse had had its armor removed and was fitted into a leather sling. A dozen soldiers and sailors rigged a crane and slowly, jerkily, lowered the unhappy beast over the rail to the beach, where it whinnied and scuffed, scattering pebbles and sand. As it was loosed from the sling, several more soldiers held its tack and tail, but it kicked free and ran for a time on its own, then turned, looked startled, reared, and trotted a fancy circuit of the cove.

  Reynard thought he saw trees on a headland shiver as if in reaction to the horse’s spirit, though it might have been wind. He stayed close to the old man as three brown dogs, almost as large as ponies, with leather muzzles, were also slung and winched down, but these were not set free. Instead, a single small man in pantaloons and a leather jerkin held tight to their ropes, as they seemed eager to leap and attack any and all. Fierce dogs. Dogs that wanted to fight and kill. Now would not be a good time to break free and run. The Spanish might enjoy such sport.

  A long ramp was run out over the rail, and then another, aft of the first, and more soldiers scrambled down to the beach, where they flanked the boards and prepared to steady them. Reynard and the old man descended now, single file. On the beach, the old man squatted slowly, knees popping, then sat. Reynard settled down beside him and resumed his study of the land and the ship, the soldiers and sailors and boys.

  Small crabs raced the waves and picked along the rocks. The rear of the beach, inland from the black sand, was shingle of a type he had not seen before—mixed rocks and polished pebbles, brown and gray, even pink, all shiny as glass. Now they jostled and rattled like dice. The great ship complained, groaning, creaking—making alarming reports like gunshots. Reynard had heard of trembling ground before, in Iceland . . . Volcanic. With earthquakes. Maybe they had reached Iceland!

  Or Reynard had died, and was now being punished.

  “You are not dead,” the old man said, as if reading his thoughts. “Nobody returneth from that country, so how could we?”

  Sailors and soldiers crowded the rails, eager to see, but not so eager even now to go ashore. How many fully armed soldiers were there? Reynard wondered. At least a hundred, and as many sailors.

  How many had died at Gravelines?

  “You begin here,” the old man said. “Or, like me, start over.”

  They watched young boys, los grumetes, as the old man called them, trying to shove through the crowd to the rail.

  “The young are still curious. But most sailors, and smart soldiers, are less so. This is a strange land, and the ship is familiar, however much its bilges stink, however infested with lice and fleas.”

  Both had already found their way onto Reynard but, strangely, were either dying or dead
. He had already plucked and tossed a few of their small, familiar corpses. “You have been here before?” he asked.

  “Not for decades,” the old man said. “I know not what hath changed. The sailors wish to return to sea with the flood,” by which he meant the tide. “But el capitán is eager for conquest. And so his mare.” He turned his head and pointed to the galleon. “El maestro.”

  A very fat man climbed onto the forward ramp, then stepped down delicately to the beach, face pale and sweating despite a steady breeze that blew up the cove. He was soon followed by the gentleman, Cardoza, el capitán, who whistled and called as he descended, until his fine mare trotted to him. Soldiers in armor brought down an ornate tooled saddle, and soon the gentleman rode tall over to the fat man.

  Then Cardoza and el maestro called for the rest to descend, all but a small crew to tend the ship and bring out weapons, and a guard to watch from the remaining crow’s nest.

  The old man prodded Reynard. “Get up,” he said. “They have need of us.”

  Cardoza dismounted and led his mare over to them. Reynard knew horses from his uncle’s stable, where, between fishing voyages, they had tended a fair number of Southwold’s draft and work animals. Cardoza’s mare was of mixed Arab blood, brown-eyed, with a concave forehead, strong despite the hardships—magnificent and nervous and very tired of being cooped up on the ship. No doubt her hooves would need tending, and soon, if el capitán planned to ride her about on these clattering shingles—as he seemed eager to do.

  “The old sailor hath skills sharpening swords and repairing locks,” the captain said, “but he saith thou know’st the needs of horses. Is this true?”

  Reynard patted the animal’s neck until it seemed to accept him, then got down on one knee, lifted its foreleg, and studied the horse’s hoof. “Too long she stands in wet and piss,” he said. “She wants a good trim and new shoes. Hot shoeing will be best. I can do it.”