seas of venus - the most important ghost
Nov. 12th, 2023 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursulaAn important development! (I've known all along that this was the problem I was writing toward, but now I have to figure out what happens next.)
The previous installment was here.
That was my last time upon the deck for many days. The Frenchmen secured us below the hatches where they themselves had lately been confined. They made no distinction of rank. The tallest midshipman hung a blanket to make a private space where he could contemplate his newfound responsibilities, or else weep without us seeing. We hung a second blanket to conceal the stinking buckets that contained our daily waste. Otherwise we were scattered across the hold like a handful of dried peas.
I did my best to sleep, for I had no desire to meet those so lately dead. My dreams were not troubled by Lieutenant-turned-Captain Hayward, nor the Frenchmen, nor the master's mate, who had also perished in the fighting. I thought once that I heard Charlotte whimpering, as she used to do when she was ill or overcome by feeling. It was strange to have so homely a nightmare, amidst the depredations of war. I shut my eyes more firmly and tried to dream of sunlight on fair waters.
I felt the transition to Venus, when it came, as a shift in the quality of the air. It pressed so thick and close about me that if I touched my tongue to the fine hairs of my arm I suspected I would lap up drops of dew.
The Frenchmen now allowed groups of us to venture on deck, taking one shift at a time. It was a courtesy that we had not afforded them, but they far outnumbered us, and perhaps they thought there was less likelihood some man would venture to escape, under the golden sky. They avoided conversation, aside from curt directives to stand here or move there. But my compatriots were eager for information, most particularly for a description of what Monsieur Doucet had intended, for it was clear that Christian Doucet could not have been his true name, and yet he must have known that the Baucis tended toward the angels' pathways. I did my best, therefore, to listen.
It was the consensus of our captors that Doucet had been in truth their captain's cousin. They were equally convinced he was a spy. He had not initially traveled with them. Rather, they had retrieved him from the neighborhood of Amalfi, where he boarded the brig in dead of night, in sober tradesman's dress. Nobody could identify his reason for leaving his true name out of the book, but all were convinced he had one. Perhaps he would have made revelations one by one, cutting one bead after another from its string, if we had not pre-empted him by our sudden transit.
I gnawed on this mystery for many bells, but at length I was distracted by a new worry: evening was drawing nigh. Venus does not have a day like the one we recognize, but it has a season of light and a season of darkness, and as the Baucis bore westward, yellowish shadows clung about us.
By now the Baucis must easily have cleared Corsica. In the reckoning of the Jack whose true name was Cornelis, we were at the Venusian longitude that matched to Montpellier. Yet instead of turning to the angels' roads and a port that would welcome them, the Frenchmen kept sailing west. They were pushing the Baucis hard, her sails curling round as a mermaid's bosom as she ran before the wind. In the shadows that thickened in her hold, I heard voices that were sweet as mermaids singing. I guessed that these were ghostly echoes; when the wish to hum along became too strong, I used to ask Mr. Tillstone to spin out a sailor's yarn, and he would say, "Why, of course, Mather Greenaway," and oblige.
That worked for a day or so, inasmuch as days had meaning. By then we were at the longitudes of Spain, with no sign of slowing or changing course, and the ghost songs were louder. I recognized one as a lullaby my mother used to sing. We could not have slipped back onto the angels' highway, not when the air was still as wet as if we were boiling linen. The problem was our path toward evening, I decided. I should not marvel to find ghosts in the darkness of a night that lasted nearly half a year. I wondered if I would meet Monsieur Doucet next, but comforted myself that he knew only my surname, if he remembered a name for me at all. The ship and Mr. Tillstone knew me far better.
I exerted myself in eavesdropping again. I wished to know our course. I had some struggle with terms for navigation--Charlotte and I had never talked of maps, unless you count remarking that England is half of an island, Ireland is all of one, and France is not an island at all--and then I struggled again to understand why all the conversation was of mountains, when we scudded over waves as flat as a carpet of fallen leaves. At last I realized that they meant the mountains of Spain. A few hopeful sailors believed we had tended south, that we had reached the level of Madrid or even Seville, but it was the consensus opinion that if the Baucis were to return to Earth, she would appear in the center of some vast cliff in northern Spain, and if we did not perish instantly, embedded in rock like a plum in a pudding made of granite, we would swiftly freeze to ice.
Surely, I thought, this debate could be easily settled, if not by the Frenchmen, who were not accustomed to navigating the Venusian oceans, then by one of ourselves. But when I puzzled over whom to ask, I realized the full import of our losses. The master's mate had fallen, and our temporary captain, who would have known the calculations to make even if he would not have deigned to share them with me, was gone as well. The French would not return to Earth until they reckoned we were dead in the center of the vast Atlantic. By then the shadows would have drawn to night.
After this realization, I struggled to fall asleep. Perhaps I managed it at last, or perhaps my attention merely drifted from the pressure of my hammock to the small noises of the ship. When I became aware of my position again, I felt myself constrained. My hammock seemed too small, my limbs twisted or weighted, and an elbow was somehow jutting into my stomach. I squirmed and heard the mumbling of someone reluctantly becoming awake. My cheek was kissed; and then I became entirely awake, for the mumbling was recognizably Charlotte's, but her lips were as cold as death.
The previous installment was here.
That was my last time upon the deck for many days. The Frenchmen secured us below the hatches where they themselves had lately been confined. They made no distinction of rank. The tallest midshipman hung a blanket to make a private space where he could contemplate his newfound responsibilities, or else weep without us seeing. We hung a second blanket to conceal the stinking buckets that contained our daily waste. Otherwise we were scattered across the hold like a handful of dried peas.
I did my best to sleep, for I had no desire to meet those so lately dead. My dreams were not troubled by Lieutenant-turned-Captain Hayward, nor the Frenchmen, nor the master's mate, who had also perished in the fighting. I thought once that I heard Charlotte whimpering, as she used to do when she was ill or overcome by feeling. It was strange to have so homely a nightmare, amidst the depredations of war. I shut my eyes more firmly and tried to dream of sunlight on fair waters.
I felt the transition to Venus, when it came, as a shift in the quality of the air. It pressed so thick and close about me that if I touched my tongue to the fine hairs of my arm I suspected I would lap up drops of dew.
The Frenchmen now allowed groups of us to venture on deck, taking one shift at a time. It was a courtesy that we had not afforded them, but they far outnumbered us, and perhaps they thought there was less likelihood some man would venture to escape, under the golden sky. They avoided conversation, aside from curt directives to stand here or move there. But my compatriots were eager for information, most particularly for a description of what Monsieur Doucet had intended, for it was clear that Christian Doucet could not have been his true name, and yet he must have known that the Baucis tended toward the angels' pathways. I did my best, therefore, to listen.
It was the consensus of our captors that Doucet had been in truth their captain's cousin. They were equally convinced he was a spy. He had not initially traveled with them. Rather, they had retrieved him from the neighborhood of Amalfi, where he boarded the brig in dead of night, in sober tradesman's dress. Nobody could identify his reason for leaving his true name out of the book, but all were convinced he had one. Perhaps he would have made revelations one by one, cutting one bead after another from its string, if we had not pre-empted him by our sudden transit.
I gnawed on this mystery for many bells, but at length I was distracted by a new worry: evening was drawing nigh. Venus does not have a day like the one we recognize, but it has a season of light and a season of darkness, and as the Baucis bore westward, yellowish shadows clung about us.
By now the Baucis must easily have cleared Corsica. In the reckoning of the Jack whose true name was Cornelis, we were at the Venusian longitude that matched to Montpellier. Yet instead of turning to the angels' roads and a port that would welcome them, the Frenchmen kept sailing west. They were pushing the Baucis hard, her sails curling round as a mermaid's bosom as she ran before the wind. In the shadows that thickened in her hold, I heard voices that were sweet as mermaids singing. I guessed that these were ghostly echoes; when the wish to hum along became too strong, I used to ask Mr. Tillstone to spin out a sailor's yarn, and he would say, "Why, of course, Mather Greenaway," and oblige.
That worked for a day or so, inasmuch as days had meaning. By then we were at the longitudes of Spain, with no sign of slowing or changing course, and the ghost songs were louder. I recognized one as a lullaby my mother used to sing. We could not have slipped back onto the angels' highway, not when the air was still as wet as if we were boiling linen. The problem was our path toward evening, I decided. I should not marvel to find ghosts in the darkness of a night that lasted nearly half a year. I wondered if I would meet Monsieur Doucet next, but comforted myself that he knew only my surname, if he remembered a name for me at all. The ship and Mr. Tillstone knew me far better.
I exerted myself in eavesdropping again. I wished to know our course. I had some struggle with terms for navigation--Charlotte and I had never talked of maps, unless you count remarking that England is half of an island, Ireland is all of one, and France is not an island at all--and then I struggled again to understand why all the conversation was of mountains, when we scudded over waves as flat as a carpet of fallen leaves. At last I realized that they meant the mountains of Spain. A few hopeful sailors believed we had tended south, that we had reached the level of Madrid or even Seville, but it was the consensus opinion that if the Baucis were to return to Earth, she would appear in the center of some vast cliff in northern Spain, and if we did not perish instantly, embedded in rock like a plum in a pudding made of granite, we would swiftly freeze to ice.
Surely, I thought, this debate could be easily settled, if not by the Frenchmen, who were not accustomed to navigating the Venusian oceans, then by one of ourselves. But when I puzzled over whom to ask, I realized the full import of our losses. The master's mate had fallen, and our temporary captain, who would have known the calculations to make even if he would not have deigned to share them with me, was gone as well. The French would not return to Earth until they reckoned we were dead in the center of the vast Atlantic. By then the shadows would have drawn to night.
After this realization, I struggled to fall asleep. Perhaps I managed it at last, or perhaps my attention merely drifted from the pressure of my hammock to the small noises of the ship. When I became aware of my position again, I felt myself constrained. My hammock seemed too small, my limbs twisted or weighted, and an elbow was somehow jutting into my stomach. I squirmed and heard the mumbling of someone reluctantly becoming awake. My cheek was kissed; and then I became entirely awake, for the mumbling was recognizably Charlotte's, but her lips were as cold as death.