The Bay of Deceptive Mist E-Book

Malcolm Archibald

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Robert "Rab" Munro's only refuge is the sea.

Aboard the Dundee clipper Grissel Jaffray, Munro's sailor life of brawls and brothels is a familiar chaos, until a mysterious card inscribed with religious verses and a strange castaway challenge everything he knows.

As the Grissel Jaffray sails through storms both literal and spiritual, the card's cryptic changes hint at a divine test. Munro believes that Death awaits him on land. Soon, he faces the Seven Deadly Sins personified among the crew - and in himself. With each choice, the veil between superstition and truth grows thinner.

A story of survival and faith, Malcolm Archibald's THE BAY OF DECEPTIVE MIST is an allegorical adventure set on the high seas.

Leseprobe

THE BAY OF DECEPTIVE MIST

MALCOLM ARCHIBALD

CONTENTS

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

About the Author

Notes

Copyright (C) 2023 Malcolm Archibald

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2023 by Next Chapter

Published 2023 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Jaylord Bonnit

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For Cathy

Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.

John Wesley

South of forty, there is no law,

South of fifty, there is no God.

Nineteenth-century seaman’s saying.

PRELUDE

DUNDEE, SCOTLAND

Midnight, 13th September 1857

I will go back to the great sweet mother,

Mother and lover of men, the sea.

Swinburne; The Triumph of Time

Rab ran, gasping with effort, so the breath burned in his throat. He looked over his shoulder with his eyes wide and his heart hammering. The man was still there, following him, faceless, sombre, silent, floating behind him with one hand outstretched and a finger pointing. Rab could not see his pursuer’s face, only a shadow within a deep hood.

“Leave me!” Rab shouted, hearing the terror in his voice as he stumbled over the uneven ground.

“I will never leave you.” The words entered, unbidden into Rab’s mind. “I am always with you.”

“No!” Rab nearly screamed the word. He ran on, blundering into the uncaring darkness. He staggered, feeling rough stones under his feet as a bitter wind tore at him, threatening to throw him to the ground. He could smell the sea, salty, fresh, and welcoming. If I reach the sea, he thought, I’ll be safe. The sea is freedom.

The thunder of surf sounded ahead, rhythmical, mechanical, and reassuringly familiar. Rab ran towards the sea, seeking asylum in an element he considered home. The mountains were behind him, gaunt, blue-grey and grim; alien as was everything on land, they rose in serrated grandeur like the teeth of a rusted saw. As Rab glanced behind him, he saw tendrils of mist slithering from the peaks, reaching out to him like the questing fingers of an unfriendly giant, seeking to drag him back to the captivity of the land.

“No!” Rab screamed again and ran on, sliding on slippery scree, fighting over frost-rimmed rock, desperate to reach the comfort of the sea. “Leave me!”

“I will always be with you,” the voice sounded in his head. The figure was still there, remorseless in its advance across the land, with its arm outstretched and its face all the more awful for being hidden.

“Leave me alone!” Rab covered his ears with callous, work-roughened hands. He saw the sea ahead, a line of silver-white surf splintering on the ragged shore. The sea would help him; the sea would protect him. Reach the sea, and I’ll be safe.

A seabird hovered overhead, its curved wings vibrating in the updraught of an unseen air current. Rab looked up, saw the bird’s hard, predatory eyes and turned away, continuing his headlong rush to the coast. He knew the hooded figure was following, relentless in its pursuit. He could feel it thrusting towards him, easing into his body, mind and every fibre of his being.

“Leave me alone!”

Although Rab could see the sea, the promise of freedom seemed no closer. The glitter of sunlight on choppy water was a deceptive illusion. The faster he ran; the more escape eluded him.

Was that a ship? Rab thought he saw the gleam of sunlight on the main upper topgallant of a sailing ship.

Her master must be a fine seaman to have his upper t’gallants hoisted in that narrow passage.

What passage? Where am I?

Rab tried to ease the confusion inside his head. He blinked at his unfamiliar surroundings with the ragged mountains and the moan of the wind.

Where am I? Who is chasing me?

Turning, Rab saw the figure closing, with its arm outstretched and the deep hood shading the face.

Who are you?

“You know who I am,” the voice eased into his head, speaking an unknown tongue that Rab understood perfectly.

The seabird rose effortlessly, swooping away as the offshore wind strengthened, carrying a scent of damp moss to combat the salt of the sea. Rab halted momentarily to gather his strength, half turned and resumed his flight for the shore. He could see the ship clearly now, a three-master with a clipper bow and a figurehead as familiar as his face in a mirror.

I know that ship, Rab told himself. I know everything about her. He slipped on a wet rock and fell, landing in a patch of soft moss that yielded under him. He knew the figure was coming closer but had no energy to run. He lay, sobbing for breath as the chill from the moss seeped into his body.

As the hooded figure ghosted closer, Rab forced himself upright, ready for a final effort to escape. I’m not prepared to die yet. I’ll cheat Death as long as I can.

“Are you Death? Have you come for me?”

The figure slowly pushed back its hood. “Not yet,” the words formed inside Rab’s head. “We’ll meet again at the Bay of Deceptive Mist.”

“Where?” Rab asked. “Where is that?” Rab looked around him, not recognising anything. “Where are we?”

The figure dissipated into mist without replying, leaving Rab standing on the moss, with the raw wind scoring his face.

When Rab shook his head, his surroundings blurred and faded into nothingness, leaving him lying on the pile of old sacks that was his bed, with the ashes of the pitiful fire long since dead in the grate. Rab groaned and sat up, staring around the single filthy room. One pane of glass in the window was intact, with newspaper stuffed into the remaining seven apertures, while mice and insects scurried over the stained, rotted floorboards.

Rab’s mother lay naked beside her latest paramour, both snoring, with an empty bottle of “kill-me-deadly” whisky between them and their clothes an untidy pile on the floor. Rab’s mother moaned in her sleep, turned over, muttered something, and pushed her sailor bed partner further away. Her tangled hair covered half of her face, revealing only prominent red veins and the dark shadows under her eyes.

Rab struggled to his feet, stepped over the adults’ recumbent bodies and hesitated. He winced at the new bruises from his shoulders to his thighs and touched his swollen left eye before running his hands through the sailor’s pockets. He halted, heart pounding madly when the man stirred in his sleep. Waiting, frozen with fear, Rab heard a drunken argument in the close outside the house. He ignored the shouted profanities, for they were normal in this street. Only when the sailor settled down again did Rab continue with his investigation.

Finding a few loose coins, he gripped them firmly, withdrew his hand, and opened the door sufficiently wide to escape without awakening the adults. The damp smell of the close clung around him as he ran down the worn stone steps to the street outside.

Dundee greeted him with a thin “smirr” from the sea, the smell of tar from the nearby docks, and the noise of the continued drunken argument. Rab walked around the couple, ignoring their obscene threats and wild swinging fists. He did not look back at the house he had left behind; he did not look back at his mother. She had never cared for him, and Rab harboured no false romantic notions of maternal love. He had long since learned that life was a daily struggle to survive, nothing less and certainly nothing more.

Rab turned the corner and ran until the breath grated in his throat, and he could see the masts and spars of the ships protruding over Dock Street. Somebody would want a ship’s boy, somebody, anybody would help him escape this nightmare people called life. He knew the hooded figure was following him, hoping to entice him to the Bay of Deceptive Mist, wherever or whatever that was. Rab knew that the figure would catch him eventually, but he would run as long and as far as he could. If he kept away from land, he might be safer.

Rab knew his future lay at sea, where the great green-grey rollers swept on forever and the air bit keenly at his malnourished body.

CHAPTER1

DUNDEE, SCOTLAND, 1877

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep;

O, hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the sea.

William Whiting

“Awa ye go, ye blethering skite!”1 A woman screamed the words as she staggered from a Dock

Street public.2

Rab Munro watched without interest. Arguing couples were as common as drunken seamen in the maritime quarter of Dundee. He thrust his pipe between his teeth, searched his pockets for tobacco and groaned when he remembered he had finished his last quarter ounce.

Munro returned the pipe to his pocket and glanced up. The pigeons huddled in a noisy flock, puffed up against the sleety rain as they huddled in the gothic monstrosity above Munro’s head. Although officialdom termed the structure the Royal Arch because it commemorated the visit of Queen Victoria to Dundee, most people called it the Pigeon’s Palace. Officials and the general public alike cursed the myriad birds that made the Arch their home. Like the pigeons, Munro used the Arch as a makeshift shelter, listening to the wind wailing through the rigging of the ships in the neighbouring docks. Pulling the collar of his threadbare jacket up to protect the back of his neck, Munro walked along the edge of Victoria Dock, inspecting the ships.

I need to find a ship. I can’t remain onshore.

Two of the vessels were jute carriers, recently back from the east, with evidence of a tropical storm in their patched canvas and their holds probably crawling with rats and vermin. Munro passed them without a second glance, knowing it would be weeks, perhaps months before they were unloaded, refitted, and ready for sea. A third was Arctic Fox, a Greenlandman returned from the north with ice scars on her hull and the stench of rotting whale blubber hanging over her. Munro knew Arctic Fox well, having served two trips in her to the ice and back. As he paused, a ship’s watchman watched suspiciously, ready to move him along.

She must have had a bumper catch to return early in the season. That means big oil and bone bonuses for her crew.

On the opposite side of Victoria Dock, a pair of Baltic brigs waited to unload their cargo, and a collection of fishing boats swung at sullen anchors. Munro allowed his gaze to pass over each vessel, unconsciously noting their names, condition, and the likelihood of obtaining a berth. He discounted the fishing boats, for they would have a fixed crew, probably of family members or close friends, while their trips were too short to interest him. The Baltic brigs were more of a possibility.

Munro strolled past with his eyes busy, analysing every detail of the vessels in the dock. He felt instant sorrow at seeing these creatures of the open sea confined in such a small space. Their masts and spars, stripped of sails, looked naked and skeletal, with the faint breeze whining through the rigging, sounding like prisoners pleading for release.

One ship floated alone, carefully tied up between the Baltic brigs and the fishing boats. Munro sat on a bollard, took his empty pipe from his pocket, and surveyed the vessel through critical eyes.

With her three masts raking aft and a long bowsprit thrusting forward, the ship boasted a clipper bow and promised speed, which most shipmasters and all owners valued as a prized commodity. Jamming his pipe between his teeth, Munro walked around the dock for a closer inspection. He moved slowly with the slight sway that told of long months at sea, stopping as he neared the clipper.

Grissel Jaffray was brightly painted in yellow on the ship’s black stern. Munro nodded, recognising the name; she was a Dundee-built flyer, one of a pair from Dargie and Milne, a now-gone shipyard. Munro remembered one of the owners had died during the launch of their final vessel, a clipper named Thomas Weir, which had a run of bad luck and disappeared at sea. The more superstitious of the nautical fraternity claimed Thomas Weir had put a curse on the shipyard.

Halting at Grissel Jaffray’s stern, Munro surveyed her, sucking at his empty pipe.

Glancing aloft, Munro saw Grissel’s masts towered to the damp sky, freshly painted and with new rigging, all ready for sea. He stepped to her bow and frowned when he saw a patched scar where her figurehead should be.

What happened to old Grissel? Did you lose her in a storm? Or did your master run you aground somewhere, Grissel? A ship without her figurehead is like a woman without a face or a man without a soul.

Munro stepped back, nodding in approval at the appearance of the clipper, save for the loss of her figurehead.

You’re a possibility, Grissel, if you’re sailing soon. I wouldn’t have chosen to sign articles for your sister ship, though; she could be covered in gold leaf and offer double wages, and I would not have sailed in Thomas Weir.

Munro stepped away as the watchman on the closest of the Baltic Brigs leaned over the taffrail. “Looking for a berth, mate?”

“Maybe,” Munro said cautiously. A Baltic Brig would be a fine stopgap. I’d escape the land for a while before the winter ice. He glanced over his shoulder, knowing the hooded figure was there, waiting for its opportunity. Munro returned his attention to the watchman. “Do you have a berth?”

The watchman ran a careful eye over Munro. “Aye. We might have one for you here if you’re a seaman.”

Munro examined the brig. Her name, Mary Grey, was prominent on her stern in white letters. “Where are you bound?”

“Riga, with general goods, to return with a cargo of flax before the ice closes in.” The watchman eyed Munro. “What was your last ship?”

Lady Lawson, Munro said.

“A coaster carrying coal from Fife to Aberdeen,” the watchman nodded. “And before that? You have the look of a deep-water man.”

Arctic Fox, Munro said laconically, nodding to the whaling ship on the opposite side of Victoria Dock. “Last season. I’ve been coasting this last year or so.”

“You’ve been a Greenlandman, then.” The watchman did not move from his place on the taffrail. “What rank?”

A harpooner or other specialist might have forgotten the requisite skills to sail in a Baltic brig. The watchman was testing Munro with every question.

“AB,” Munro said. AB meant Able Bodied Seaman, the backbone of any ship, with all the maritime skills that shipmasters and mates required. A deep-water vessel could never have too many ABs.

The watchman nodded, trying to hide his interest. “You’ll have your certificate of discharge.”

“I have,” Munro said. “It’s marked VG.” VG - very good - meant Lady Lawson’s master considered him a good seaman who did not cause trouble.

“If you show it to Mr Bruce at the shipping office tomorrow morning, you can sign articles and come aboard.”

Munro removed the empty pipe from his mouth. “I’ll maybe do that,” he said.

“You’ll have your dunnage with you.”

Munro gestured over his shoulder with the stem of his pipe. “It’s with Lawson’s Colliery Company. I’ll pick it up when I find a ship.”

“Your pipe’s empty. Here,” the watchman carefully extracted a twist of tobacco from his pocket, cut half an inch and tossed it over.

“Thanks, mate,” Munro acknowledged. He looked up at the steadily increasing rain. “I see Grissel’s back.”

“Aye,” the watchman agreed, glancing at the clipper. “She’s a fine ship if you don’t mind her bucko chief mate.”

Munro began to stuff tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “A tartar, is he?”

“Bully Anderson. You might know the name. He’s a gross-grained hectoring monster of a man, a regular bashaw of the seas.”3

“I’ve heard of him,” Munro agreed. Bully James Anderson’s name was known wherever British seamen sailed, which meant every ocean and port in the world. He was as brutal as any Down Easter mate in the old American blood boats, 4 known for enforcing his own brand of discipline with fist, boot, or marline spike. Munro had wondered why such a beautiful vessel was still in dock, but Bully Anderson’s reputation may have contributed to the delay.

Munro scratched a match, turned away from the wind, and applied the flame to the tobacco in his pipe. “I won’t be sailing with Grissel.” He lifted a hand in acknowledgment, drawing breath through the stem until the tobacco glowed red. “Thanks for the bacca.”

The watchman nodded, pulled his bonnet further down his forehead, and turned away, deliberately avoiding looking at the clipper astern. “Mr. Bruce is the managing owner, mind. He’ll see your documentation.”

Munro rechecked the brig’s name as he walked through the Royal Arch into Dock Street. Mary Grey. I’ll remember that. He touched the pendant that swung from his neck, feeling the embossed figure who protected him. We’ll be back at sea soon, my Lord Poseidon.

Munro did not know what propelled him away from the sea. His feet seemed to follow their own path until he was in the Overgate, one of the principal routes leading from central Dundee to the west. Munro heard the singing as he strode along the street, looking for a public house or cheap lodgings to spend the night. He stopped under a flickering gas light, ignoring the water that wept from the glass bowl and the tall policeman who watched him from under frowning brows.

Secure under the shadow of the tall steeple of the City Churches, the simple sign read Tally Street. As Munro looked up, he saw a single star above the tower, flickering to him above the drifting smoke from a thousand chimneys. For a moment, Munro wondered at the meaning of that lonely bright speck, but then he heard somebody singing and wondered if there could be a public nearby or perhaps a music hall.

No, Munro shook his head. That’s the wrong sort of music.

Munro stepped away from the suspicious eyes of the policeman, heading further into Tally Street. The noise came from an undistinguished building with windows like arrow slits and a heavy, open door. A hand-painted sign on the wall said Methodist Chapel in plain black letters on a white background. An elderly man stood just within the doorway with a slight smile on his unshaven face and a Tam o’ shanter 5bonnet at an acute angle over his left eye.

He cocked an eyebrow at Munro. “Are you going in, son?” His voice sounded like an old door creaking open, yet his eyes were friendly.

Munro hesitated. The building was warm and welcoming, with the old man inviting him with a smile. It was not quite what Munro had hoped for, but it was better than a cold night alone in the street. He listened to the singing that rolled into the damp road from the interior.

“Eternal Father strong to save,

Whose arm has bound the restless wave,

Who bids the mighty ocean deep,

Its own appointed limits keep.”

Munro recognised that the song’s powerful words and music were intended to appeal to a maritime audience. He touched his amulet and stepped back, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I won’t go in.” He thought of his last voyage in Arctic Fox, where pack ice trapped the ship for three weeks, and young Peter Ibister from Orkney died of exposure in an open whaleboat. Munro had watched Peter slip away, deteriorating hourly as their boat drifted into a series of floes. No Eternal Father had intervened to save the youngster then. Munro stepped further back into the rain, with the old man’s eyes following.

The singing continued.

“O hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in Peril on the sea.”

The old man smiled, showing white teeth. “Do you like the song?”

“It’s quite evocative,” Munro admitted grudgingly.

The old man’s smile broadened. “I think so. As Charlie Wesley said, ‘Why should the devil have all the good tunes?’“

Munro felt his pendant press against his chest. He stepped away into the rain.

“Come on in. You’d be welcome, son,” the old man encouraged. “Free soup and company, and we’ll find you a warm, clean bed for the night.”

For a moment, the prospect tempted Munro. An easy night on shore and sign on Mary Grey in the morning seemed like a good deal, but something stronger pushed him away. “No,” he shook his head. Damned sanctimonious hypocrites, he thought. What right do you have to sing about the sea? You’ve no idea what it’s like out there.

The old man nodded. “As you wish, my friend. The door is always open for you.” He pressed a small square of cardboard into Munro’s hand. “Take this. It may come in useful sometime.”

Munro grunted. “I doubt it,” he glanced at the card, seeing a central text with the number seven on the top left side. He shrugged, saw the old man was watching, smiling through weary yet bright eyes, and crushed the card into his pocket. I’ll throw it away later.

The singing began again, with the words rolling out of the chapel like the tide churning into an unstable anchorage.

“O Christ, the Lord of hill and plain,

O’er which our traffic runs amain.”

“God be with you,” the old man put a hard hand on Munro’s shoulder. “Man may fall and rise again.”

“Man may fall off the rigging in a screaming force ten gale,” Munro said. “But he’ll never rise again.” He felt the old man’s eyes on him as he turned away, surprisingly unsettled by the meeting.

Methodists? What do they know about the sea? If I remember rightly, sometime last century, people named Wesley’s Holy Club the Methodists because they observed their religion in a methodical manner. The only method I know is how to sail a blasted ship. Munro shook his head. Singing hymns never stopped a storm.

Munro strode towards the Nethergate, hearing the hymn fade behind him as his boots splashed through the puddles. Twenty bitter years at sea had taught him to rely on nobody but himself and his ship. When times were tough and mountainous seas were breaking over the taffrail, the helmsman was shaking, and the master white, Munro knew nobody, no man and certainly no God, would help. Only you, my guide, Munro said, touching his pendant. And maybe good shipmates.

The church encounter had put Munro in evil humour, so he glared at a drunken docker, hoping for an excuse to fight, but the man looked away, muttering incoherently. Munro stomped on, head down, shoulders bowed, and fists clenched.

The shipping agents were closed for the night, so he could not sign articles for Mary Grey until morning. Munro looked for a public house, preferably where he could also have accommodation. Instinct brought him closer to the maritime quarter, where he understood the people and the sights and smells were familiar. When he heard footsteps behind him, he glanced over his shoulder to see a hunched figure a couple of hundred yards back. Munro felt a familiar shiver of fear and lengthened his stride, fighting the boyhood memories. The figure looked up from bowed shoulders, eyed Munro from rheumy, weak eyes, and headed into a close.

It’s only an old man; it’s nothing to worry about. Yet Munro could not control the erratic pounding of his heart. He hurried up, not daring to look back for fear of what he might see.

Calm down, Rab. You’re in Dundee, not a bay of deceptive mist. Find a safe harbour for the night and drink your fears away.

Munro headed into Couttie’s Wynd, a centuries-old passageway from the town centre towards the Shore. He knew it contained a combination of lodging houses, public houses, and brothels, many of which would provide him with a room for the night. The wynd was narrow and gently curving, with high tenements on either side, so the sky was barely a memory, and his footsteps echoed from the dark stone.

Amongst the denizens of outcasts, daggle-tails6 and the unwanted, a few respectable people lived out their lives. Munro inadvertently glanced through one lit window to see an elderly woman. She sat erect on a straight-backed chair, busy with some sewing. The woman must have sensed Munro’s presence, for she looked up as he passed and met his gaze. When Munro lifted a hand in apology, the woman’s lips twitched in the faintest shadow of a smile.

Munro moved on, wondering how such a blameless-looking woman should come to live cheek-by-jowl with a community of drunks and flashtails.

With every step taking him closer to the sea, Munro felt his uneasiness dissipate like an ebbing tide on a shelving beach. He stopped, glanced over his shoulder, and wondered if he should find a public or return to the dock. Munro could quite easily bed down in any dockside corner, under a pile of fishing creels or in a shop doorway, with the scend of the sea only a seagull’s call distant. However, he knew he would prefer a glass of rum and a warm, willing woman, so he remained in the wynd.

The noise of singing and dancing echoed down the curved alley, with light female laughter joining the deeper, more raucous male voices. Munro forced himself to relax and feel at home in this environment. He saw a drunken seaman careen from one doorway with a woman at his side, made room for them until they passed, read the gaudy sign Dorothy’s Harbour, and pushed open the door. If all else fails, Dot’s whorehouse won’t let you down.

CHAPTER2

Come all you fair ones, come all my fond ones,

Come and listen to me,

Could you fancy a bonny sailor lad,

That’s just come home from sea?

Could you fancy a bonny sailor lad,

That’s just come home from sea?

The Saucy Sailor Boy, 18th-century pump-shanty

From the damp darkness of Couttie’s Wynd, Munro stepped into a brightly lit room with an atmosphere that immediately lifted his mood. A woman played a jaunty tune on a piano while men and women danced, sang, or sat in groups at circular tables. The conviviality encircled him, welcoming him into its home.

“Yes, sir?” The barman was bald, smiling, and red-faced.

“A bottle of Youngers beer,” Munro ordered. “And a whisky.” He slapped two silver crowns on the counter. “Keep them coming until that’s gone.”

“Yes, sir,” the barman happily agreed. He poured a dram of whisky and pulled a pint of dark beer into a schooner glass, allowing the frothy head to overtop the rim before pushing both glasses to Munro.

“What ship?” The barman asked.

“No ship yet,” Munro told him.

“Deepwater man?”

“Deepwater, Greenlandman, coaster,” Munro shrugged. “Wherever I can find a berth.”

The barman nodded. “Best of British, mate.” As Munro stepped away, the barman raised a finger to a slender teenager who sat at the back of the room. When the youth gestured at Munro, the barman nodded.

Finding a corner table, Munro sat with his back to the wall, facing the door with his schooner in his hand and his eyes watching who entered. Without any interest, he saw the youth disappear through a door at the back of the room. The beer was cold and welcome, the whisky rough, possibly created at some illicit still in the Angus Glens, but Munro guessed it would make him oblivious to the world within a short time, which suited him perfectly.

He checked the contents of his pocket, realised he had sufficient funds for a few more days ashore and wondered if he should sign articles for the Baltic brig or hope for another vessel later. Dundee was a busy port, and Munro had no doubt he could find a ship.

Does it matter which ship I am on? As long as I am safe at sea.

Looking around the room, Munro realised that most of the male clientele were seamen. Some looked very young, boys back from their first voyage and now determined to prove they were men by drinking and paying for a woman. Others were veterans like Munro, knowing no other life except the sea and dockside publics, lodging houses and brothels. One man caught Munro’s attention, for he was evidently out of place.

With a billycock hat on the bench at his side and a smile on his face, the man was around fifty, portly and cheerful as he balanced a much younger woman on his knee. His teeth were white against his deeply tanned face when he laughed, and his whiskers were as dark and luxuriant as a much younger man’s. Probably dyed, Munro thought, uncharitably as a second woman joined the portly man, who looked up, caught Munro’s gaze, and waved.

Munro acknowledged with a nod, wondered why an outwardly respectable man should be in such an establishment as Dorothy’s or Madam Dot’s as the seamen knew it. An overweight middle-aged woman with small, calculating eyes sat on a raised stool in one corner, watching everybody. That must be Madam Dorothy, Munro thought. He promptly forgot her as a much younger woman appeared from the door at the back of the room and approached him.

That youth has fetched me a woman to help spend my money. That was kind of him.

“Halloa!”

The woman was about twenty-five, Munro guessed, with a friendly smile and a shapely body. The ribbons in her hair cascaded to her shoulders in a colourful cascade that framed a heart-shaped face. She sauntered toward Munro, slightly emphasising her body’s natural rhythm as she held his gaze.

“Halloa yourself.” Munro shifted aside to make room for the woman.

“My name is Samantha,” the woman said, pressing her hip against his as she slid onto the bench beside him.

“Mine is Robert,” Munro allowed his gaze to run over her, from the bright ribbons to her shapely feet in their tight black boots. She’ll do nicely. “Most people just call me Rab.”

“Rab! What a manly name!” Samantha said, smiling. Her perfume wafted across to him, more subtle than he expected, light, flowery but heady.

“I’ve had it for years, and Samantha is a beautiful name,” Munro countered, breathing in her scent. He had met fifty Samanthas in dockside pubs and brothels in a hundred anchorages from St. Petersburg to Hong Kong. He knew what she was and did not care.

“What are you drinking, Samantha?” Munro signalled to the barman. He expected her to ask for gin and guessed the house kept it heavily watered so Samantha would remain sober while he became steadily drunker. He knew how seaman’s public houses worked and accepted the publican’s tricks as the price he had to pay to find cheerful female company and something alcoholic to drink.

After long voyages with only sweating, foul-mouthed men as companions, even a few hours with a woman were like paradise to a seaman. Munro did not only crave sex, although that was always welcome, but companionship, a light smile and conversation that did not centre on profanity and the faults of the ship and her crew.

Samantha put her delicate hand on Munro’s thigh, so the lamplight reflected from the tawdry ring on her middle finger.

“Which ship, Rab?”

“I’m in between ships at present,” Munro told her, watching the light play in her eyes and her lips curl into a smile.

“Good,” Samantha’s fingers walked up and down Munro’s leg. “I’ve got you all to myself then.”

“You have,” Munro agreed. He saw the portly man engaged in a deep embrace with one of his two women while the other balanced his billycock hat on her head, laughing. Behind him, the main door opened, and the man with the Tam o’ shanter entered the room. He found a seat near the bar, waved away the attentions of a woman and sipped at a small tumbler of whisky.

So much for holier-than-thou Joe, Munro thought.

Samantha matched Munro drink for drink, laughed at his attempted humour and listened with pretended interest when he regaled her with tales of life at sea. Munro knew she had heard the like a hundred times before, knew her smiles were professional, but what did it matter? His wants on shore were simple: drink, a cheerful woman, and a dry bed. What else could life provide for a sailorman separated from the sea?

Samantha must have caught the drift of Munro’s thoughts, for she edged even closer on the padded wooden bench. “Where’s your home, Rab?”

“My home?” Munro frowned when Samantha asked such an unexpected question. “I don’t have a home,” he replied at length. “Whatever ship I happen to be on, I guess.”

Samantha laughed again. She laughed easily at his sallies. “I meant your homeport.”

Munro shrugged. “I don’t have one.” Too many years had passed since his childhood in Dundee that he did not even consider it as home. It was only another port in a life of fleeting visits.

“You must come from somewhere. Everybody comes from somewhere.”

“Must I?” Munro thought for a few moments, forcing his mind back across two decades of incessant wandering, countless miles of seaways, storms and calms, arrivals and departures. He resolutely pushed away any memories of his childhood. “No, Samantha. I belong to the sea. I’m an ocean gypsy; I don’t want a home port. I don’t want to be tied to the land.” He glanced up as the door opened, dreading the hooded creature, but it was only a couple of young seamen, both already reeling from drink.

Samantha’s mouth drooped. She trailed her hand over Munro’s leg, feeling the wiry muscle as her fingers walked upwards again. “Poor you,” she said. “A man without a home.”

Munro smiled and allowed her fingers to wander. The portly man was singing now, with the second woman still wearing his billycock hat. “Do you have a room?”

“Upstairs,” Samantha said at once. She understood a seaman’s needs.

“Come on, then,” Munro stood up, finished his whisky at a single draught, and hauled Samantha to her feet. She came willingly, emptying her glass as she rose.

“This way,” Samantha led him through the crowded room, where the old man with his Tam o’ shanter sat alone in a corner, faintly smiling. “Up the stairs,” she opened the door at the back of the room, winked at the barman, and held Munro’s little finger in her knowing hand as she climbed the echoing stairs.

Samantha’s room was little more than a cubicle, separated from its neighbours by thin wooden partitions. Unused to privacy, Munro accepted the tiny space without thought. Compared to the crowded fo’c’s’le 1 of any ship in which he had sailed, Samantha’s home was luxurious.

“Have another drink,” Samantha said, passing over a small bottle. “I take wee sippers from the dark rum,” she explained with a wink. “Nobody notices, and it’s a free drink for you and me.”

Munro accepted the drink, nodded his thanks, and took a sip. He knew that many public houses poured the dregs of unfinished spirits into the dark rum, but alcohol was alcohol, and he was not a man to refuse a free drink. He glanced at the cheap print of a Highland scene on the wall and the flashy jewellery on the dressing table, which, together with a long mirror, a hard-bottomed chair, and the bed, completed the room’s furnishings. “Is this your home?”

“The only one I have,” Samantha said, sitting on the bed. She unfastened the buttons at the side of her boots and slid them off one by one, ensuring Munro had a lengthy survey of her ankles and calves. “Do you like it?” She looked up at him with the ribbons in her hair dangling in front of her face.

“It’s very nice,” Munro told her without a hint of irony as he swallowed more of the rum.

“Finish it,” Samantha said carelessly, leaning back with her skirt loose around her knees. “I can always get more.” She watched as Munro tipped back the bottle, then patted the bed at her side. “Sit beside me, Rab.”

Munro obeyed, smiling as Samantha’s hand began to explore. The evening was progressing as he had expected. He closed his ears to the sound of somebody moving in the cubicle next door.

“Take your trousers off,” Samantha said casually as she untied the ribbons from her hair and placed them on the dressing table. “That’s better. These things are damned irritating.” She shook her hair loose, so it cascaded over her shoulders, scratched her head, and smiled. “Thank God you’re a real man, Rab, not one of those pampered poodles who’ve never seen a woman before and come to Madam Dot’s for their first experience. I cannae abide them.”

Munro nodded. “Everybody has to learn,” he said.

She examined him through narrowed eyes. “How tall are you, Rab?”

Munro shrugged, catching sight of himself in the mirror. “About five foot seven or eight.” He saw the heavily weather-beaten long face with short brown hair and steady grey eyes above a prominent nose and severe mouth. He knew he was not a handsome man.

“You wear an earring, I see,” Samantha said. “Is it gold?”

Munro had paid half his oil money from a previous whaling voyage to purchase his gold earring. He wore it as an insurance policy, so if the sea ever rejected him and cast his drowned body ashore, the gold ring would pay for a decent burial. Munro shook his head, unwilling to tell the truth to a woman he did not know. “It’s brass,” he said with a twisted smile.

Samantha smiled. “I suppose a sailor could not afford gold.” She fingered the pendant that Munro wore on a leather thong around his neck. “What’s that? I’ve never seen the like of that before.”

“That’s Poseidon,” Munro explained. “The Greek God of the sea. The Romans changed his name to Neptune, but I prefer the Greek name. He is the son of Cronos and the brother of Zeus.”

“He looks handsome, like you,” Samantha examined the figure. “And he’s got a large trident, like Britannia on the pennies!”

“Poseidon is important,” Munro explained. “The trident is a symbol of his power.”

Samantha released the pendant, drifting her fingers across Munro’s hard chest. “Why do you need a sea god?”

“I belong to the sea,” Munro said.

“Don’t all sailors belong to the sea?” Samantha asked.

“Most. There is a saying that the sea refuses no man.” Munro’s grim mouth twisted into a smile. “I don’t know any saying that the land refuses people.” He touched his pendant. “Poseidon has kept me safe for most of my life.” As a young seaman, Munro had bought the pendant from a merchant in Piraeus in Greece. The merchant had been a plausible rogue who assured him a holy man had blessed the charm and Poseidon would save him from dying at sea.

“I wouldn’t be without Poseidon,” Munro said.

Why am I saying all this to a sixpenny ladybird? I don’t tell anybody these things.

Munro blinked, seeming to see Samantha through a fog. That’s why. This woman has drugged me. He closed his mouth with a snap.

“Taking effect, is it, Robert?” Samantha asked as he slid backwards on the bed. “It does that. You’ll be out for hours and wake up with a bad headache. You ought to be more careful, you know.”

I’ll be more careful who I talk to and what I say, that’s for sure. What the hell have I said?

Munro saw Samantha loom over him and felt her going through his pockets. He tried to stop her but found he could not move.

“Just lie still now,” Samantha said casually. “Laudanum and rum are a potent mixture. There’s nothing you can do.” She removed his money, fingered the pendant and shook her head. “You can keep your wee charm. It’s not worth a brass farthing.”

Munro closed his eyes as his senses drifted away. If life at sea was dangerous, being ashore also had perils.

CHAPTER3

The mate was a bucko, and the Old Man a Turk,

The bosun was a bugger with the middle name of Work,

Leave her Johnny: Nineteenth-century pumping shanty.

Munro woke to the familiar stuffy stench of a ship’s forecastle and a head that split with pain. He rolled on his side, trying to recall what had happened. He remembered Samantha’s ribbons, broad smile, long legs, and friendly hands. Munro held his head in both hands to control the pain.

Did somebody hit me? I can’t recall anybody else in the room.

Yes, Samantha had taken him to her room. They had shared the contents of a bottle, Munro remembered. No, that was not entirely correct. Samantha had not drunk from the bottle but had insisted he finish it before telling him it was drugged.