Page 22 of Blow Me Down
“I wouldn’t rightly be callin‘ that mangy collection of feathers and lice a bird,”
Bart said, picking up the fire tongs and using them to prod the boy toward the door.
“His name is Bran. Me ma said it means raven in Welch.”
“Welsh,” I corrected, giving in and following Bart and the filthy boy out to the hallway.
“Me ma said a raven on yer doorstep meant death to everyone who lived there.
Me ma saw a raven and she died the next day,” the boy added with grim relish.
Bart stopped for a moment to have a few words with one of his men.
“How horrible. You poor thing; when did she die?”
Bas’s shoulders twitched in what I assumed was a shrug of ignorance. Bran the raven fluttered his scraggly feathers in mute protest of the action. “Don’t remember. She drowned, though.”
“I’m so sorry. Was she out sailing?” I asked, aware of the morbid tint to the conversation, but unable to stop myself from encouraging the lad to talk.
“Nay. She drowned in a vat of ale.” Bas scratched his ear with the tip of his crude hook, examined the results closely, then wiped the hook on the ragged remains of a pair of woolen breeches. “Fell in trying to skim a bit off, and stayed there to drink her fill. The night watchman found her dead, floatin‘ on the top, all bloaty and puffed up and swollen.”
“Good God!” I stared at the boy in horror. He didn’t look the least bit disturbed by the retelling of his mother’s appalling death. “How very tragic.”
He made the odd half-shrugging motion again. “Don’t know about that. The watchman said she was smilin‘.”
I opened my mouth to respond with some sort of sympathetic platitude but couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to that. So I allowed Bart to give me details about meeting up with his first mate for sailing instructions and guidance, thanked him for his help, and finally headed down the hill with a new provisional crew, a foil strapped to my hip, and a cabin boy who would make Eeyore seem like the life of the party.
“Have ye ever seen a corpse what’s been in the water for a few days?” Bas asked in a conversational tone of voice.
I flinched. “No, nor do I want to discuss it.”
“They be all pasty white and green and sometimes fishes eats bits of them—”
“Right, I think it’s time for a few house rules, Bas.”
The boy looked around as we trod the path from the governor’s house down to the town proper. “We be outside now.”
“Yes, I know; it’s just a figure of speech.”
“Look, a death’s head. He who sees that with an unclean soul will be dead afore dawn,” the boy said, pointing to a cloud that passed over the newly risen moon.
“Er… yes. Now, as to our rules. I don’t know what the going rate for cabin boys is, but I will find out and give that to you, as well as making sure you have food, regular baths, and some decent clothes. How does that sound?”
Bas stopped next to a small house, his head tipped as he listened intently, interest lighting his dark eyes. “Hear that tappin‘? Deathwatch beetle. Someone be dyin’ in that house.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered under my breath. “Rule number one: No discussions of what bodies look like when they’ve been drowned.”
“I saw a man what had been partially eaten by a shark,” Bas said as I hurried him down the irregular cobblestones. “Both his legs was gone, and half of his head—”
“That includes bodies that have been partially eaten. In fact, I think we need a moratorium on bodies altogether.”
Bas didn’t look too happy about that, but I didn’t care. Obviously his early years had tainted him with an unusually morbid obsession with death and dying. He just needed someone to turn his mind to more healthy subjects.
“You’ll like Renata and the ladies. They are very… uh… popular women, so don’t pay any attention to the gentlemen you see visiting them at night. And…
er… during the day, too. Probably a few in the morning, if I know Suky.”
“Be they tarts?” Bas asked.
