The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (good novels to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Fletcher Pratt
Book online «The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (good novels to read .TXT) 📗». Author Fletcher Pratt
For him there was little sleep, and as life flowed along ankylosed muscles, he was invaded by a sense of irrevocable disgrace, so poignant that it drowned fear. Damaris the maid . . . he had sold his soul for a copper there . . . not that he felt to the girl any profound debt as to Lalette, or that such a debt were just—but whether from the priests’ teaching at the academy, or the words of Remigorius, he had somehow grown into a pattern of life which, being violated, one was cast down into a sea of life by merest impulse . . . ah, no, should it not be rather that each event must be judged by itself? . . . and no, again—for by what standard shall one judge? Impulse or an absolute, there is no third choice.
So thinking, so seeking to find a clue to conduct (or to justify his own, merely, Rodvard told himself in a moment of bitterness), he lay on his comfortless couch, aware that the ship had begun to move with uneasy tremors; and presently dawn began to flower. At the room’s entrance a lantern showed a bearded face, into which a whistle was thrust to blow piercingly. All the men leaped from their shelves with a gabble like a common growl and began dressing in the greatest haste. The bearded man shoved through them and shook Rodvard so rudely that he was jerked from his shelf, coming down thump on the deck, with feet that would not hold him.
“Rouse out!” said the bearded man, catching him a clout across the headbone. “You lazy scum of shore mechanicians must learn to leap when the mate sounds.”
Rodvard staggered amid coarse laughter, but having no means of protest, followed the Kjermanash, who were scrambling rapidly up the ladder. They were in open sea; the breeze was light, the day clear and the air fine, but even so, the slight motion gave him a frightful qualm. His first steps were across the deck to the rail, where he retched up all that lay on his stomach, which was very little.
“You, what’s your name?” said the bearded mate.
“Rodvard—Berg-elin.”
“I call you Puke-face. Go forward to the mainmast, Puke-face, eat your breakfast if you can, and then repair the iron fitting that holds the drop-gear repetend. The carpenter’s cabinet under the break of the prowhouse will give you tools.”
“I—I cannot use tools. I am—a clerk, not a mechanician.”
“Death and dragons! Come aft with me, you cunilingous bastard!” The mate’s hand missed Rodvard’s neck, but caught a clutch of jacket at the shoulder, and dragged him along the deck to where a flight of steps went up, and the one-eyed captain stood, an ocular under his arm. “Captain Betzensteg! This lump of excrement says it knows nothing of mechanic.”
Sick though he was, Rodvard felt the Blue Star burn cold and looked up into an eye (brimming with something more than mere fury, something strange from which his mind turned). “Diddled, by the Service!” said the voice, between heavy lips. “When next—ah, throw your can of piss up here.”
Rodvard was jerked against the steps, striking his shin, and stumbled up by using his hands. The one-eyed captain reached out and ripped the badge from his breast, tearing the cloth. “Go below, stink-pot,” said he, “and tell my boy he’s promoted to seaman. You shall serve my table.”
“Yes, sir,” said Rodvard and looked around for his route, since all the architecture of a ship was stranger to him than that of a cathedral.
“Go!” said the captain, and lifted an arm as though to strike him with the ocular, but changed his mind. “What held you from telling your status?”
“Nothing,” said Rodvard, and gripped the rail of the stair-head, for his gorge began rising within.
“If you puke on my deck you shall lick it up.” The captain turned his back and shouted; “Lift the topper peak-ropes!”
Down the stairs again there were not so many ways to choose from, so he took to the door to the right (hoping under his mind that this would be an omen) along a passage and into a room, where a sullen-faced lad of maybe eighteen was folding a cloth from a table. “You are Captain Betzensteg’s boy?” asked Rodvard, trying to keep from looking through the window, where the sea-edge rocked slowly up and down. “I am to say you are promoted seaman.”
The lad’s mouth popped open as though driven by a spring, he dropped the napery and ran around the table to seize Rodvard by both arms. “Truly? If you trick me—” For one instant pale eyes flashed fury and the small down before first shaving trembled. But he must have seen honesty before him (“Born for the sea and freedom!” his thought read), and quickly thrust past to make for the door.
“Stay,” said Rodvard, holding him by the jacket. “Will you not show me—?” The spasm caught him and he retched, mouth full of sour spittle.
The lad turned laughing, but without malice, and clapped him on the back. “Heave hearty!” he said. “It will come better when you come to learn the free way of the ocean; grow to love it and care nothing for landlouts. Here are the linens.” He opened the midmost of a set of drawers built into the wall. “The old man takes no napkins save when there are guests aboard—a real dog of the brine, with fish-blood in his veins, that one! I am called Krotz; what’s your name?”
Rodvard’s telling, he hardly seemed to notice, but continued his flood of instructions. “In these racks are the silvers; he uses only the best, and be careful at dinner to set his silver bear on the table, it was given him by the syndics at the time of the Tritulaccan war for his seamanlike skill. The bed-bunk you must carefully fold in at the base, but he likes the top loose, so. Wine always with the early meals, it is here. If the weather’s fair he sometimes takes fired-wine in the evening. If he orders it so—”
The lad Krotz halted, looked sidewise out of his eyes and leaned close. “Hark, Bergelin, I am not what you would call jealous. Have you ever—that is, when he has fired-wine, he may desire to treat you as his lover.”
“I—” Rodvard recoiled, and retched again.
“Ah, do not be so dainty. It is something that every true seaman must learn, and keeps us from being like the landlouts. You do not know how it can be, and he gives you silver spadas after. But if you will not, listen, all the better, when the old man calls for his fired-wine, set the bottle on the table, take away the silver bear, and call me.”
Said Rodvard (no little astonished, that the emotion of which The Blue Star spoke was indeed jealousy); “No. I’ll have none of it, ever.”
A smile of delight so pure that Rodvard wondered how he had thought the lad’s look sullen. “The cook will give you breakfast. I must go—to be a seaman.”
Captain Betzensteg ate by himself. Rodvard was glad that he remembered the silver bear, but when he tried to hold forward the platter of meat as he remembered seeing Mathurin do it for Cleudi, he got things wrong, of course, and the one-eyed man growled; “Not there, you fool. The other side.” The meat itself was something with much grease, pork probably, which it sickened Rodvard even to look at as the captain chewed liquidly, pointing with his fork to a corner of the cabin and declaring he would barber someone of his ears unless it were kept cleaner. That night there was no call for fired-wine; Rodvard felt a surge of gratitude for preservation as he cleared up after the meal, and made his way forward to the crew quarters in what he now had learned to be the peak-jowl.
Sickness sent him to his shelf at once, for the movement of the ship was becoming more vivid as twilight fell, but sleep had not yet reached him when there was a change of duty, as in the morning, and of those who came tumbling down the ladder, Krotz was one. He was much less the lord of the earth than earlier; no sooner was the lad in place than all the Kjermanash were after him unmercifully, with hoots and ribald remarks, pinching his cheeks and his behind, till at the last the lad, crying; “Let me alone!” flung his arms out so wildly that he caught one of the sailors a clip on the nose and sent him staggering. The fellow snarled like a tiger, all his rough humor dissolved in black bile, and recovering, whipped out a tongue of steel. But Rodvard, without knowing how or why he did so, rolled from his shelf onto the shoulder and arm that held the knife, bearing the man to the floor.
The Kjermanash fought upward; Rodvard took two or three nasty blows on the side of the head, as he clung with both his hands to the dagger, and knew with more interest than fear that he must lose in the end to the overbearing strength of the man. But just as he was giving way, a pair of hands beneath the armpits wrenched him clear and flung him against the shelves, while a big foot kicked the knife.
“What’s here?” demanded the voice of the bearded mate. “Puke-face, you’ll have a dozen lashes for this, damme if you don’t! You to attack a full-grade seaman!”
Said Rodvard, feeling of his head; “He would have knifed Ser Krotz.”
“Ser!” The mate barked derision, and his head darted round like a snake’s. “Is this veritable?”
All the Kjermanash began cawing together; the mate appeared to comprehend their babble, for after a minute or two of it, he held up his hand with; “Shut up. I see it. This is the sentence—Vetehikko, three days’ pay stopped for knifing. As for you, Puke-face, your punishment’s remitted, but in the future, you’ll sleep in the lazarette to teach you your true status aboard this basket.”
He turned to the ladder, and not a word from the Kjermanash for once, but as they glowered among themselves, young Krotz came to throw his arms around Rodvard. “I owe you a life,” he said, at the edge of tears.
Said Rodvard; “But I will pay for it.”
“Ah, no. I—will surely buy you free.”
“I did not know there was status aboard a sea-ship; you said the life on one was free as a bird.”
“Why, so it is, indeed, but not for lack of status, which is the natural order of things. Are you an Amorosian?”
It nearly slipped off Rodvard’s lips that he was rather of the Sons of the New Day, but Krotz’ words showed how little he would find such a confession acceptable, and he did not trust the Kjermanash; and by another morning, the ship’s motion told on him somewhat less heavily.
17CHARALKIS: THE DEPTH AND RISE
It would be maybe on the fourth day out (for time had little meaning on that wide blue field) when Rodvard remarked how at the evening meal Captain Betzensteg took more than usual wine, glowering sullenly at his plate while he jabbed a piece of bread into gravies as though they had done him a harm. The last mouthful vanished, he sucked fingers undaintily and without looking up, said; “Set out the fired-wine.”
Rodvard felt a cold sweat of peril. The silver bear leaped from his fingers, and it was his fortune that he caught it before it reached the floor. The captain sat with eyes down, not appearing to notice. Bottle clacked on table; the one-eyed man poured himself a deep draught, and at the sound of the door opening, said; “Stay.”
Rodvard turned. Both the captain’s hands were on the table, gripping the winecup and he was staring into it as though it were a miniature of his beloved. “Come here.”
(Fear: but what could one do or say?) Rodvard glided to his post in serving-position behind the chair. For a long breathless moment no sound but the steady pace of someone on the deck above, muted slap of waves and clatter of ship’s gear. Then the head came up, Rodvard saw how the rich lips were working (and in that single eye read not only the horrible lust he had expected, but that which gave him something akin to pity, a ghastly agony of spirit, a question that read; “Shall I never be free?”) Captain Betzensteg lifted the cup in his two hands and tossed off the contents at a gulp, gagged, gave a growl of “Arrgh!” and, reaching up his left hand, ran
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