The Wreckers Read online

  I wanted to cry out, but dared not. These men weren’t rescuers. They hadn’t come to save us, but to kill us. And I could only watch as Cridge’s hand came free from the mussels, came groping up to claw at the man’s rolled-down boot top. His other hand swept up, streaming water, and clutched on beside it. His legs thrashed and kicked.

  But the man didn’t move. He only stood there and put more of his weight on that foot, and the water bubbled around his boot through a mat of snowy hair. Old Cridge flailed and splashed in the shallow pool, his motions growing frantic, and then subsiding. But the man paid the drowning sailor no more attention than he’d give to a dog pawing at his foot. He took a pipe from his pocket, tamped the bowl with his thumb, and then shook the stem toward the wreck of the Isle of Skye.

  “Right square on the Tombstones,” said he. “Bad bit of luck there.”

  “We brought her in, Caleb,” said the man on his right.

  “Oh, we did that. But half a cable on either side, and she’d be lying high and dry, and there for the picking.” Then he clucked and spat, and the caped men stood ragged in the wind, their backs toward me, staring at the wreck.

  In a flash I was up. I shook off the last tangles of kelp, cast away the slats from my wrist. I took a step back, another. One of Cridge’s hands slid down the man’s boot, and I saw the fingernails torn away, the smears of blood they left on the oiled leather. The man they called Caleb pressed harder, but with no more thought or care. He just pushed with his boot as he shook his pipe and talked.

  “Still, with this sea running, she’ll be down to splinters and chips by nightfall,” he said. “Won’t be nothing left but the ballast stones.”

  I turned and ran. It was no more than five yards to the rocks, but it seemed a mile. My boots sank in the sand. I stumbled, caught myself, stumbled again. I kicked at the sand, grabbed at it; I half crawled and half ran. At every moment I expected a shout behind me, a cry of alarm. And then I was up among the rocks, into a crevice at the cliffs, and when I looked back the men were still standing in the shallows. Poor old Cridge floated at their feet like a straw man. Then I saw with dread the tracks that I’d left, the marks, as though a whole regiment had fled along the beach. And without a second’s pause, I turned and tackled the cliff.

  The rocks were slick with rain and spray. Three times I nearly fell; twice I hung by my fingertips from bare nubs of stone, my feet swinging in air sixty feet above the sand. Once I sent a little spray of pebbles skittering down, and pressed myself against the rock, waiting for that shout from below.

  As I climbed, the bay opened below me. I saw the fires, still burning, women gathered around them in billowing shawls. Where a rutted track emerged from the gully, wagons were drawn up on the sand, wild-haired ponies standing in slack harness. Men labored back and forth, carrying boxes and barrels and armfuls of wood, staggering back-bent under piles of linens and clothes. One hauled up a sailor’s sea chest over his shoulder. Another dragged a long snake of rope. They dropped their things in haphazard piles, and at each stack a child sat guarding the treasures, as though these men who plundered the wreck might also steal from each other.

  Then I reached up my hand and felt, not rock, but a warm stubble of grass. And I pulled myself to the top, and crouched on a narrow ridge. It dropped nearly as steeply on the other side, down to a harbor and a little village on its far shore. The buildings there were whitewashed, roofed with thatch or with copper turned green by the salt air. A cart went weaving up a narrow lane, and beside it, with her load of sticks, walked a woman in ivory shawls. Boats lay dry on the tide, each reflected in the shallows of a river that came down under a bridge of arched stone. On the hill above the village stood a church. There was safety there, and rescue, if only I could reach it.

  The wind pulled me and pushed me; it swept like a scythe through the yellowed grass and on from there—forever, it seemed—across a desolate moor. Wave after wave of low, barren hills marched to the sky, and not a single tree stood among them. Yet a pair of ponies grazed just a hundred yards from the clifftop, hobbled and heads down.

  I took a step toward them. They lifted their heads, manes streaming back.

  And then it came. A shout of anger, a shrill cry of alarm. One voice at first, and then many. And on the beach below, two men started up the cliff. I ran. I raced across that narrow ridge, up toward the moor, on toward the ponies. I heard the creak of wagon wheels, the crack of a whip. Horses snorted, and hooves pounded on the road.

  The ponies gazed at me. They turned toward me, and on their sides I saw lanterns hung by leather straps, the glass on one tinted green, the door swinging open. And I knew then what I’d seen from the ship, the beacons that had led us to the Tombstones. They were the lights of wreckers, borne by ponies across the hilltops. These men had carefully, willfully, led our ship to its doom.

  And then from the ground behind the ponies, from a hollow in the hills, the wagon came sailing up from the moor in a cloud of frothing dust.

  The driver sat hunched forward, his arms lashing with the reins. He looked like a bird, like a raven. The wagon careened around a bend and came straight toward me. The horses were black as tar, glistening with sweat. I could hear their breaths, the thunder of their hooves now on the roadbed, now on the grass.

  Ahead was the moor, vast and empty. On each side and behind, the sea stretched from headland to headland, from sky to sky, flecked with the whitecaps of great rolling waves. I had nowhere to go.

  The wagon came rushing on. And the men burst from the clifftop behind me, staggering up the slope with their hands pumping at their knees.

  I swung to my left and threw myself over the brink.

  For an instant there was no sound at all. I seemed to float in that one long second, above the little harbor and village. Then I hit the slope with a thud, rolled and skidded, tumbled and caught myself, tumbled again.

  I didn’t look back, I didn’t look down. I only let myself fall, grabbing when I could at bushes and rock, taking each shock with my knees and my arms, hurtling down in an avalanche of pebbles and dirt. And I spilled out at the bottom, arms wheeling as I stumbled backward across the beach, stumbled and twirled and, finally, fell spread-eagled in the shallows.

  I felt I could lie there a long time, with the gulls circling high above, the clouds like a fleet of sailing ships as the sun at last burned through. Across the harbor, sunlight shone on whitewashed walls, on window glass and weathercocks. Beyond the row of seaside buildings, above the homes, the bell tower of the great stone church beckoned. I climbed to my feet and headed toward it.

  Suddenly the water beside me erupted in a geyser of white froth. I heard a clap, felt the ground thud. On the other side, the water burst into a towering column, and then again behind me.

  “Get ’im!” The voice came from above me. I had to shield my eyes from the sun to see the men there, gaunt silhouettes. One of them moved, and an instant later the water exploded again, so close that drops splashed on my face. The men were hurling rocks the size of cannonballs.

  I ran along the waterline, weaving and ducking. The rocks came faster, splashing in the water to my left, crashing into the shale and sand to my right.

  And straight ahead, a plume of dust swirled across the valley. The wagon was racing for the bridge.

  I crossed the river, weaving round boats, sprinting for the seawall. I could hear the wagon wheels chattering on the bridge, the shouts of the driver urging on his horses. I reached the wall, only to find the stones slick with weeds. Behind me, the men had started down the cliff.

  Along the wall I ran. Gasping. Legs aching. A boat lay prow to the wall, and I stumbled across it. And just beyond there, I found steps. Up I went to a long and empty street paved with cobblestones. On both sides, the buildings rose in overhanging tiers, closing in toward the top.

  Somewhere ahead, horses’ hooves rang on the paving stones.

  I hurried to my left, toward a lane that seemed to lead upward to the church. At the corne
r was an inn, the Jack-a-Dandy, with a sign of a clown hung from a beam. Across from it hunched a crumbled old blockhouse with a low, open doorway.

  The sound of hooves grew louder. It echoed from wall to wall down the canyons of empty streets. It shook the windows and rang in the chains of the Jack-a-Dandy’s sign. A drumming, thundering beat, it came from every direction, building and growing like a rising wind. I had little choice; I ducked through the door of the blockhouse, into a darkness cold and dank. There was only one window, a bare slit in the stone, and it let in just a blade of light. But I crept as far from the door as I could, and the hoofbeats boomed in the building.

  Through the door I saw a horse hurtle past, saw it from the withers down, dark hair gleaming, a man’s boots kicking at the flanks. Another passed in a blur of hooves, a third behind it. Then their clatter faded.

  In the silence that followed, I heard a soft and secret sound. A man breathing. And from the shadows and the gloom, a voice rasped in my ear.

  “One noise and you’re done for,” said this voice like a rusted hinge.

  Chapter 3

  THE LEGLESS MAN

  It was too dark to see anything clearly. There was only a shape that seemed to glide instead of walk, that slid across the floor with a squeaky noise. The man circled round, and I squinted at the shadows he made.

  “Are you scared?” he asked.

  “No,” said I, though my voice quavered like a bird’s.

  “I would be, if I was you,” he said. “I’d be sick with affrightment, if you was I.”

  He moved a little further round the building. He was following the wall, stealthily, toward the door. A shaft of light came through there and lay upon the stones like a shining sword. “You’ve come from that wreck, ain’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What was she called?”

  “The Isle of Skye.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The Isle of Skye.” Again he moved. Again I heard the little sound, a chuckling like cart wheels.

  I closed my eyes. And when I opened them, I could see gray mortar around the stones, wooden beams above. The man kept moving. I could make no sense of his shape; but he was neither standing nor crawling. “How many got off?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said I.

  His arms swung forward, and he slid—there was no other word for it—into the shaft of light from the doorway. And I understood then: He had no legs. They were both gone, cut off just below the hip. The stumps were clothed in thick woolen pants folded underneath him, and he sat on a wooden trolley that he pushed along with his hands. The hem of his coat was ragged where it scraped the ground.

  I’d seen others like him, in London. In this last year of the century, 1799, after years of war against the French, the docks were haunted by sailors maimed or crippled in hideous ways. But none had filled me with the dread I felt as this man came lurching and skidding toward me.

  His shoulders were huge, his arms massive. I felt he could crush me in his hands if he liked; he could snap my bones like sticks. But of his face, I could see nothing.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  I told him. “John Spencer.”

  “From where?”

  He came closer; I pressed against the wall.

  “Where?” he roared.

  “London,” I said.

  I didn’t see him move. In an instant he had me by the wrists, both of them in one of his hands. He groped across my chest, and his fingers slithered in and out of my pockets. Then he put his face close to mine, and shapes formed in those awful shadows: the bridge of a thick, twisted nose; tallow-colored cheeks. His huge hand shook me like a rattle.

  “Do they know?” he said. “Do they know you’re in the village?”

  I nodded. “They saw me.”

  “Then you’re done for,” said he. “They’ll hunt you like a dog.” There was a strangeness in his eyes. One looked toward me and one away, and they shone in the shadows like tiny stars. “They’ll not stop till they kill you. Mark my words, boy. For it’s kill you or hang, it is. Aye, and when they do, you’ll be joining your shipmates in the bog upon the moor. And there you’ll lie with your lungs full o’ muck until the Lord pipes you aloft.”

  He turned his head and listened. There was a faint beating of hooves, steady as distant rain.

  “They’re up on the high road,” said the legless man. He put one hand on the stone floor and rolled back on his cart. Light spilled in around him, brightening the dark gloom of the blockhouse. I could see, against the wall, a pile of moldy straw and a threadbare blanket, a few narrow shelves propped on sea-worn stones. They held a candle stub and a sad collection of baubles: a bottle cracked at the neck, a whale bone and a seashell, a cutlass handle with holes where the jewels had been picked away—the sort of things a child might collect.

  In the moment that had passed, the sound of the horses had doubled in volume.

  “They’re coming,” he said, and yanked on my wrists. I fell toward him onto my knees. He shuffled back on his cart and pulled me after him. “Come,” he said.

  I could hear each stamp of the hooves, a creaking of leather. “Where?” I asked.

  “Damn you, boy.” He yanked again.

  The legless man was as strong as he looked. He hauled me through the door and, with one more pull, sent me sprawling headlong on the cobblestones. And in those worn and fitted rocks, where they pressed on my cheek and my chest, I could feel the horses. The beat of them shook the very stones.

  “Up!” he said, and wrenched my wrists.

  “Hide me,” I cried.

  “Not on your life.” He let go of my wrists. And I saw, for the first time, that the backs of his hands, his knuckles, were wrapped in bands of tattered leather. On his left hand, on his little finger, was a golden ring that I knew at once.

  “That’s my father’s!” I said.

  There was an eagle on it, wings spread. As a child, I’d liked to touch it, to turn it so the light danced upon the gold and the wings seemed to stir and flap. On my father, it was a loose fit on his ring finger; on the legless man, it barely passed the first joint.

  “Your father, you say?” His torn lips spread apart, showing broken teeth as brown as sod. “He’s wealthy, ain’t he? Rich as kings.”

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “This changes things, don’t it?” The legless man jerked me close against him. In the daylight he was a horrid figure, a thing all bloated and broken, stuffed into his gray and grimy rags. “You’ll have to hide yourself,” he snarled. “Or you’ll be the death of us all.”

  The beat of hooves thundered through the lane. The legless man pushed me away. “Now, off with you!” he said, and spun his cart toward the village.

  “Help me,” I cried again.

  “And have them find me with you?” He lurched toward me, his poor stumps of legs spread apart for balance, his fists pumping on the stone. “For seven years I’ve lived like a dog, hand to mouth in this squalid hole of a house. They call me Stumps, old Stumps the beggar man. And now I’m that close”—he rapped his fist on his cart—“to having more gold than I’ve ever dreamed of. A passage up the coast, one night at sea, and—” He stopped, wheezing. “And you think I’d trade that for you?”

  A horse came hurtling down the lane, the rider lashing it on with a short-handled crop. Behind it came another, leaning in the curve, eyes wild and nostrils flared. The legless man made a deep, awful groan. He twirled round. But a third horse appeared behind us, flying at a gallop up the street. And on its back, like a devil, rode the man named Caleb.

  The legless man grabbed my arm. He hauled me down until I knelt beside him. And with a twist of his hand, he brought my face up to his.

  “Remember this,” he said, in a voice I could hardly hear above the sounds of the horses. “If you put the wreckmen on me, your father will rot where he lies. Only I know where he is, and there he’ll stay.” His fingers were clamps. My father’s ring pressed like a bra
nding iron through my sleeve. “You tell them he’s dead, you hear? You tell them he’s drowned. Or dead he’ll be; mark my words. Dead he’ll be, all right. He’ll die of thirst, boy. His lips will turn black and rotten. They’ll ooze like splattered worms. His tongue will swell and crack, and he’ll choke on it—choke on his very own tongue.”

  He held me there as the horsemen closed round us. They sat in a half circle, leaning forward in their saddles, and the horses heaved wisps of breath through their nostrils. Somewhere in the village another horse was coming, hooves clopping on stone.

  With a creak of leather, Caleb swung down from a huge gray mount. His coat rippled around him. His hair, black as tarred rope, swept to his shoulders.

  “Well, there’s a sight,” he said. “The lad crowds on sail like a frigate. But it’s Stumps—old dismasted Stumps—what gets the wind of him.” He stepped forward. “Give the boy to me.”

  Stumps made no move to protect me. He passed me over with a nod and a little smile. “Came right to me, Caleb. Just begging for help, he was. Crying out”—this he said in a shrill little voice—“ ‘Oh! They killed them all. They killed every one but me!’ ” Then Stumps reached over and gave me a cuff on the back of the head. “So there he is, Mr. Caleb Stratton. And he’s the last of ’em, no doubt of that.”

  There was a look in Stumps’s eyes—deep and smoldering—that kept me quiet. A stranger man I’d never met, nor one so horrid. But it wouldn’t save my father—or me—to speak of him now. If the wreckers meant to kill me, I could only hope that Stumps would tell Father, when all was done, that I’d gone bravely, with no pleading or tears.

  Caleb Stratton took me by the shoulder. The fourth horseman came riding onto the harborfront, his black pacer high-stepping on the cobbles. But no one turned to look; they were all intent on me. And the village seemed as quiet as a graveyard.