Tales of Terror from the Black Ship Read online

  ‘I was sweet on a girl and would have wed her.’ He smiled weakly at Cathy. ‘But she married another. I married the sea instead.’ He took a swig of rum and looked into the fire again. I rolled my eyes at Cathy and she slapped me on the arm.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, looking back at us, ‘and I only say perhaps – perhaps I might while away some time, as I drink my drink and wait for the storm to quieten, by sharing with you a few tales I’ve gathered on my travels. How might that be?’

  Cathy readily and excitedly agreed that that would be an excellent notion, providing that our guest would not find it too tiring. I mumbled something to the effect that whatever Cathy wanted was fine by me, though in truth I did not want to give this stranger any excuse to tarry.

  ‘My only concern,’ said Thackeray, ‘is that my tales are too shocking for your tastes. I am used to the company of seafaring folk and our stories have a tendency to be – how shall I say? – of a more bloodthirsty nature than those you may have heard before.’

  Cathy and I exchanged glances and I knew that she felt the same as I.

  ‘I assure you, sir, that my sister and I are quite equipped to deal with anything you tell us. We are not babes. We have been brought up in an inn and we are well used to the ways of seafarers like yourself.’

  Thackeray rubbed his hands together and they creaked like old leather. He grinned and his gold tooth twinkled like the evening star in the twilight at the edge of the fireglow.

  ‘Very well, then, young listeners,’ he said, ‘I shall have to think . . . Ah yes. I think I have one you might find diverting. It is a romance of sorts.’

  ‘A romance?’ said Cathy with a curl of her lip. She had a spirited aversion to romances of any kind. I smiled at how swiftly Thackeray seemed to have lost my sister’s interest.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of sorts . . .’

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  Piroska

  Ships can carry many cargoes: opium or cocoa beans, oranges or timber, cotton or cast iron. They have carried invading armies; they have carried slaves. But the cargo the Dolphin carried, though human, was of a very different kind.

  For a ship can also carry dreams, and the Dolphin carried emigrants from the Eastern Mediterranean bound for a new life in America. It carried their physical bodies, their rough clothes, their meagre possessions, but it also carried their hopes and aspirations. And it carried their fears.

  These people were not the travelling kind. For generations their families had clung to the tough lives that had been handed down to them – peasants eking out a living in the shadow of ancient castles. They were a deep and superstitious people, whose fierce attachment to the land of their ancestors had been hard to break.

  And so the passengers had boarded the ship with great excitement, had sung folk songs and danced on the deck to the amusement of the crew. The lilting music of fiddles and clarinets filled the air and the ship quickly gained the atmosphere of a country wedding or a May fair.

  One of the passengers in particular soon caught the eye of a young sailor called Richard Stiles as he went about his duties: a girl – a red-haired girl – who seemed to glow like an ember, lighting up all those around her. He fell in love in a fluttering heartbeat, though he was too shy to do anything more than smile at her.

  There was something childlike about these emigrants. It was as if they were smothering their fears and doubts about the new life under a blanket of merriment and high spirits, as if their songs and laughter were charms against misfortune.

  But things changed as they headed out into the Atlantic. A storm crashed into the ship and drove the passengers below deck. Songs were replaced by prayers, laughter by groans and tears. Wives clung to husbands, children to their mothers.

  By the time the wind finally dropped a few days later, the emigrants seemed beaten, as if the storm had broken their spirits. The singing stopped, no one danced any more, and even the play of the children seemed half-hearted and muted.

  Richard Stiles looked down at the grim gathering below him as he made a repair to the mainsail rigging. He could see the emigrants were mostly from poor stock: farmers and artisans – the kind of people Richard himself originally hailed from. He was reminded of why he had run away to sea in the first place, four years ago at the tender age of eleven; he was reminded of the grey, tedious drudgery of the northern market town in which he’d been born. He understood the passengers’ desire to seek out a better life, but they reminded him of his own escape from a life that had almost sucked him dry.

  To Richard these people looked as though half their lives had already been spent in the effort of getting this far; they seemed worn away and utterly lacking in any zest for life. It was as if the enthusiasm they had shown at the start of the voyage was like a memory of joy, not joy itself; that it was an act, a sham. Perhaps this was their true form.

  ‘What a cargo,’ said a sailor nearby. ‘You’d think they were going to their funerals rather than starting new lives. They give me the shivers.’

  Richard knew what he meant. There was something unsettling about this new dour mood. He heard the captain voice concerns to the ship’s surgeon that there might be some kind of sickness among the passengers and told the crew that they were to keep their distance.

  But unfortunately this strange dullness and sloth had already seeped into the very fabric of the vessel and infected the crew, for they seemed to have adjusted their normal lusty rhythm of life to the mournful tune of their passengers.

  Where usually the crew would sing as they worked and share a joke or two, or play some harmless prank to while away the hours, they now went about their duties with the relentless monotony of factory workers. For the first time since he went to sea, life was grim and mechanical, and Richard could not wait to unload these dreary people.

  And dreariness of action and temperament was exactly mirrored in their outward appearance. The emigrants evidently did not possess a single item that was not grey or brown or black in colour, and any colour that the ship possessed seemed to drain away in the general gloom of the weather, which had been overcast and dark as a winter’s dusk for days.

  A fine mizzle fell and the horizon was hidden by low cloud and mist. The sea joined in the general sluggishness, as did the wind, which blew only gently, like an old man’s shallow breathing at the end of his days.

  But amid this dreary twilit monotone there was one note of joy, like birdsong in a cemetery: the red-headed girl Richard had fallen for. She, at least, had not lost her excitement or joyful vigour. He saw her moving gaily among the lumpen mass of passengers: a deer skipping through a winter forest.

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  She was slight of figure, and yet brimming with life, her face round and rosy-cheeked, creased by dimples. Her hair was as red as the maple trees of Massachusetts on a bright October morning. Her smile shone like a sun in that gloom and it lifted Richard’s heart just to see it.

  Of course it was true that the crew had been thoroughly warned against fraternising with the passengers, and though they were ordered to be courteous, Richard knew that he was risking a reprimand even speaking to the girl. Yet speak to her he must.

  Disregarding his fears of contracting some sort of sickness, he found an excuse to work on deck among the passengers, and as he coiled a rope he looked surreptitiously about him for a glimpse of her. Then, all of a sudden, she was standing next to him.

  ‘Hello, miss,’ he said.

  When she did not reply immediately he thought that perhaps she did not understand, but then she cocked her head to one side and smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ she said with a strong accent.

  Richard had not prepared a speech and, having found the girl, he did not really know what to say to her. They were surrounded by her fellow emigrants, who, though apparently oblivious to them, nonetheless made him feel self-conscious. S
he saw his discomfort and giggled.

  ‘You might ask me my name,’ she said with a teasing smile.

  ‘Do you mock me, miss?’ said Richard, the colour rising to his face.

  ‘No,’ she said sweetly, touching his arm. ‘I promise I do not.’

  ‘Well then.’ He looked round nervously to see if any of the crew was nearby. ‘What is your name, miss?’

  ‘Piroska,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a beautiful name,’ said Richard.

  ‘You think so?’ And she giggled again.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, embarrassed that she might think he was trying to flatter her when it was simply his honest opinion. It was a beautiful name.

  ‘Are you looking forward to living in America, miss?’

  ‘Piroska, please. Yes,’ she said. ‘I am dreaming of America every day.’

  ‘Your family is with you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Many family are with me now.’

  Richard found that he was no longer listening to the words, only watching the movement of the cherry red lips that spoke them. Piroska saw it too, and laughed a warm laugh that Richard could not help but join in with. He felt as though he had walked into a pool of warm sunshine in a dark forest.

  ‘I must get back to work,’ he said, ‘else I will be in trouble.’ He tugged at his cap and began to move away, bumping clumsily into one of the other passengers.

  ‘But you have not told me your name,’ called Piroska.

  He turned round.

  ‘Richard. My name’s Richard.’

  ‘Then we will talk again, Richard?’

  ‘Yes, miss – Pir-os-ka. We will.’

  And so they did; at first in stolen moments, with Richard forever looking over his shoulder for any sign of the captain or first mate, but gradually, as the days went by, becoming bolder. The strict regulations of the ship seemed to have fallen prey to the same air of lethargy as the passengers and, for this at least, the young sailor was grateful.

  Richard was a diligent lad and always made sure that none could reproach him in terms of the work he did, but when he had any free time he spent it with Piroska, and they sat like two lighted candles, aflame with a youthful passion for life.

  They would talk for hours and Richard marvelled at how at ease he felt in her company. He had always been awkward around girls, not knowing what to say or how to act. But it was different with Piroska. Despite the fact that they came from such different cultures, he already felt more comfortable with her than he did with his crewmates.

  Any shyness he had suffered from, Piroska had cured. No one had ever seemed so interested in him. He talked about things he had never spoken of with anyone, and voiced hopes and ambitions he had not even realised he had until she coaxed them out of him. But time and again he came away from a conversation realising that he still knew almost nothing about his red-haired angel.

  ‘Your family do not mind that I speak to you alone like this, without a chaperone?’ asked Richard one day. He had been meaning to ask this for a long time but had held back for fear of hearing or even suggesting some problem.

  Piroska smiled and shook her head.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘My family like you. They are happy that I know you. They would like you to come to America with us.’

  At first Richard thought he must have misheard. He had a tendency to gloss over any mention of America, as to talk of their destination and their parting was too painful. He was amazed. He was not even aware which of the passengers were Piroska’s family and began to feel a little guilty about his lack of curiosity now that he knew of their approval of him.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I am flattered, but, Piroska, I am a sailor. That is my life . . .’

  Piroska smiled.

  ‘You will come to America with us,’ she said. It was a statement, not a question. He felt suddenly intimidated by her unequivocal tone.

  ‘I must get back to work,’ he said.

  She smiled and ran her fingers through her long red hair, making it flicker like a flame. Richard watched the light run down its length and stream over her shoulders, and he felt as though he were flowing down with it, as if he were falling helplessly over a waterfall. It took an effort of will to wrench himself away.

  Richard spent the rest of the day in torment. The sea was his home and he had always loved the life of a mariner. Could he really give that up for the unknown trials of a settler? What did he know about farming or shop-keeping? What did he know about anything except rope and sailcloth, knots and rigging?

  And yet, much as he loved sailing, he loved Piroska with a different kind of heat and energy. He may once have had a passion for his work, but that was fading now and he wondered if it had ever been as fervent as the passion he now had for this girl.

  All through the hours of that day, he found it almost impossible to think of anything else. He nearly fell down an open hatch, he was so preoccupied, and as his heart skipped a beat at the thought of the broken bones he would have suffered, he noted that no one around him even seemed to have noticed and would certainly not have had the presence of mind to prevent him. It was as though the whole ship were sleepwalking.

  And in a way that helped to make up his mind. The sea and the life of a sailor had been a source of excitement to him, but he could not make any such claim now. He did not fear change any more; he wanted to embrace it.

  The fact was he might never again meet a girl like Piroska. She was the most important thing in his life now, by far. He would never have believed that anyone could compete with the ocean for his attentions and emerge the victor, but Piroska had. She was a full moon, eclipsing everything.

  It was as if all doubt evaporated in an instant. Everything seemed crystal clear to him now. Whatever new challenges lay ahead in the wild expanses of America, whatever hardships or dangers, he was equal to them so long as he had Piroska by his side.

  The sun had set and eight bells rang to signal the end of the last dogwatch. It had been raining steadily all day and the sails hung limply, like giant sheets on a washing line. Every rope and chain and piece of wood or canvas was slick with water and dripped on to the sodden deck.

  Richard was soaked through himself, but that did not dampen his spirits as he moved through the lantern-lit huddles of passengers, looking for Piroska. Then, suddenly, there she was, more beautiful, more alive than ever. Richard felt as though they were the only beings truly alive in their small part of the universe.

  ‘Piroska,’ he said, ‘I want to come to America with you, if you still want that.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said with a smile. ‘I am very happy.’

  Richard had so much he wanted to say that the words seem to trip over themselves in their eagerness to escape, and he floundered, tongue-tied. He reached out and took her hand in his and was amazed at how warm it felt in the chill of the night and the cold rain’s incessant patter.

  ‘There’s more,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t just want to leave this ship and go to America with your people. I want to go with you. There’s something special between us. You do feel that, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, her green eyes sparkling with a diamond brightness and clarity. Rain trickled down Piroska’s face but she did not seem to care and smiled on regardless. A drop of water ran from her forehead, down the edge of her nose and across her lips. As it left her mouth and dribbled down her chin, it turned red. Richard had seen consumption before and his heart sank as if it had been turned to lead. He remembered the surgeon’s talk of sickness.

  ‘Piroska,’ he said. ‘My love, you are not well.’

  ‘You called me your love,’ she said as the trickle of blood dripped from her chin. A tear mingled with the rain on Richard’s cheek.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘Do you love me?
’

  ‘Of course,’ said Piroska. ‘That is why I have saved you till last.’

  Richard frowned, puzzled by what she could mean. The chatter of the passengers and the work of the crew had come to a halt, and Richard looked around to find that the whole ship was staring at him in silence.

  The only sound was the gentle whisper of the waves against the hull and the creak and squeak of wet ropes and sailcloth. Richard had a falling feeling, a gut-churning unease. It was as if he were in a dream, though he knew he was awake. Every eye was turned upon him, every mouth was closed, like an audience waiting for the start of a play.

  He realised that he had never really looked at these other emigrants since they first boarded the ship. Apart from Piroska they were just an amorphous mass, a single dull entity.

  But now he could see their faces, pale and hungry. He saw their limpid, red-rimmed eyes. He saw the livid, ugly pairs of puncture marks that studded their scrawny necks.

  When he turned back to Piroska, beautiful Piroska, her smile widened; it widened more than Richard could ever have thought possible. He just had time to register the sharp fangs – and then, with snake-like speed, she struck.

  *

  When I looked at Cathy her face bore an expression I knew well: one that was a curious compound of fear and enjoyment. It was an expression that I always hoped to see on ending a story, for it was as sure a sign of satisfaction as a round of applause. Thackeray could see that too, and allowed himself a rather unpleasant smirk.

  ‘Was my story to your liking?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Cathy, holding her hand to her heart as if trying to steady its beat. ‘At first I was a little worried it was going to be some sort of awful love story.’ Cathy screwed up her face as if she had tasted something especially unsavoury.

  ‘Well,’ said Thackeray, taking a sip of rum and licking his lips, ‘it whiled away a few minutes.’

  He grinned at Cathy in a most inappropriate way.