Page 33

THE QUICKENING OF THE VIVACIA

T HEY brOUGHT HIM ABOARD on a litter. That was what made Brashen’s heart clench and sudden tears burn his eyes.

In the moment that he beheld the limp form beneath the linen sheet, he grasped the full truth.

His captain was coming back aboard to die.

His secret hope that Ephron Vestrit was not truly that badly off, that somehow the sea air and the deck of his own ship would miraculously revive him was only a silly child’s dream.

He stood back respectfully as Kyle supervised the men who carried his father-in-law up the gangplank.

They set his litter under the canopy Brashen had improvised from canvas.

Althea, as pale as if she were carved of ivory, stood there to receive him.

The family trailed after him like lost sheep, to take up places around Ephron Vestrit’s litter as if they were guests and he were a laden table.

His wife and elder daughter looked both panicky and devastated.

The children, including an older boy, looked mostly confused.

Kyle stood back from them all, a look of disapproval on his face as if he were studying a poorly-repaired sail or a badly-loaded cargo.

After a few minutes, Althea seemed to break loose of her stupor.

She left quietly, returning with a pitcher of water and a cup.

She knelt on the deck beside her father and offered him a drink.

In the first hint of motion that Brashen had seen from him, Ephron turned his head and managed to sip some water.

Then, with a vague motion of one skeletal hand, he reminded them that he must be lifted from the pallet and placed on the deck of his ship.

Brashen found himself starting forward to that gesture, as he had so often sprung to obey his captain.

He was briefly aware of Kyle’s scowl before he crouched by Captain Vestrit’s pallet.

‘If I may, sir,’ he said softly, and waited for the half nod of both recognition and permission that he was given.

Althea was suddenly beside him, slipping her arms under her father’s bony legs as Brashen himself took the bulk of the old man’s weight.

Not that there was much weight to him, or even that he was all that old, Brashen reminded himself as he eased the emaciated body down to the bare planks of the deck.

Instead of frowning at the hardness of the deck, the captain sighed as if some great pain had suddenly eased.

His eyes flicked open and found Althea. A trace of their old spark was there as he quietly commanded her, ‘Althea. The figurehead peg.’

Her eyes widened for an instant in a sort of horror.

Then she squared her shoulders and rose to obey him.

Pinched white lines formed around her mouth as she left her father’s side.

Instinctively Brashen began to withdraw.

Captain Vestrit would not have asked for the figurehead’s peg if he had not felt death was very near.

This was a time for him to be alone with his family.

But as Brashen drew back, he felt his wrist suddenly seized in a surprisingly tight grip.

The captain’s long fingers dug into the flesh of his arm, and drew him back, closer.

The smell of death was strong on him, but Brashen did not flinch as he lowered his head to catch his words.

‘Go with her, son. She’ll need your help. Stand by her through this.’ His voice was a hoarse whisper.

Brashen nodded that he understood and Captain Vestrit released him.

But as Brashen rocked back onto his heels to stand, the dying man spoke again.

‘You’ve been a good sailor, Brashen.’ He now spoke clearly and surprisingly loudly, as if he desired not just his family, but everyone to hear his words.

He dragged in a breath. ‘I’ve no complaint against you nor your work.

’ Another breath. ‘Could I but live to sail again, you’d be my choice for first mate.

’ His voice failed on the last words, coming out as a wheeze.

His eyes left Brashen’s face suddenly, to turn unerringly to where Kyle stood and glowered.

He struggled, then drew in a whistling breath.

‘But I shan’t sail again. The Vivacia will never again be mine.

’ His lips were going blue. He found no more air, struggle as he might.

His hand knotted in a fist, made a sudden, violent gesture that would have been meaningless to any other.

But Brashen leaped to his feet and dashed forward to find Althea and hurry her back to him.

The secret of the figurehead peg was not widely known.

Ephron had entrusted it to Brashen shortly after he had made him first mate.

Concealed in the tumbling locks of the figurehead’s hair was a catch that would release a long smooth peg of the silky grey wood that comprised her.

It was not a necessity, but it was believed that if the dying person grasped this peg as his life departed, more of his wisdom and essence would be imparted to the ship.

Ephron had shown it to Brashen and illustrated how it worked, so that if some ship’s disaster felled him, Brashen might bring him the peg in his last moments.

It was a duty Brashen had fervently hoped never to perform.

He found Althea dangling all but upside-down from the bowsprit as she tried to tug the peg loose from its setting.

Without a word he followed her out, grasped her around the hips and lowered her to where she might reach it more easily.

‘Thanks,’ she grunted as she pulled it free.

He lifted her effortlessly and set her back on her feet on the deck.

She raced back to her father, the precious peg clutched tightly in her fist. Brashen was right behind her.

They were not a moment too soon. Ephron Vestrit’s death was not to be a pleasant one.

Instead of closing his eyes and going in peace, he fought it as he had fought everything in life that opposed him.

Althea offered him the peg and he gripped it as if it would save him.

‘Drowning,’ he strangled out. ‘Drowning on a dry deck.’

For a time the strange tableau held. Althea and her father gripped either end of the peg.

Tears ran freely down her ravaged face. Her hair, gone wild about her face, clung to her damp cheeks.

Her eyes were wide open, focused and caring as she stared down into the depths of her father’s mirroring black eyes.

She knew there was nothing she could do for him, but she did not flinch away.

Ephron’s free hand scrabbled against the deck as if trying to find a grip on the smoothly sanded planks.

He managed to draw in another choking, gurgling breath.

A bloody froth was beginning to form at the corners of his mouth.

Other family members clustered around them.

The older sister clung tightly to her mother, wordless in grief, but the mother spoke in a low voice into her hair as she embraced her.

The girl child wept, caught in a sort of terror, and clutched at her confused smaller brother.

The older grandson stood back and apart from his family, face pale and set as one who endures pain.

Kyle stood, arms crossed on his chest, at the dying man’s feet.

Brashen had no idea what thoughts passed behind that still countenance.

A second circle had also formed, at a respectful distance outside the canopy.

The still-faced crew had gathered, hats in hands, to witness their captain’s passing.

‘Althea!’ the captain’s wife called out suddenly to her daughter.

At the same time she thrust her older daughter forward, toward their father.

‘You must,’ she said in an odd, low voice.

‘You know you must.’ There was an odd purposefulness to her voice, as if she forced herself to some very unpleasant duty.

The look on the older daughter’s face — Keffria, that was her name — seemed to combine shame with defiance.

Keffria dropped to her knees suddenly beside her sister.

She reached out a pale, trembling hand. Brashen thought she would touch her father.

Instead she resolutely grasped the peg between Althea’s hand and her father’s.

Even as Keffria made her unmistakable claim to the ship by grasping the peg above Althea’s hand, her mother affirmed it for her.

‘Althea. Let go of the peg. The ship is your sister’s, by right of her birth order. And by your father’s will.’ The mother’s voice shook as she said the words, but she said them clearly.

Althea looked up in disbelief, her eyes tracing up the arm from the hand that gripped the peg to her sister’s face. ‘Keffria?’ she asked in confusion. ‘You can’t mean it!’

Uncertainty spread over the older woman’s face. She glanced up at the mother. ‘She does!’ Ronica Vestrit declared, almost savagely. ‘It’s how it has to be, Althea. It’s how it must be, for all our sakes.’

‘Papa?’ Althea asked brokenly.

Her father’s dark eyes had never left her face. His mouth opened, moved, and he spoke a last phrase, ‘… let go…’