Parry glanced down, as though suddenly made aware of the very deck his boots seemed to rest on, whose swell-borne rise and fall was like some huge, submerged creature’s breath. But: “No,” he said, to himself. “It cannot be.”
“Why, since you didn’t grasp the trick of it first?” Rusk scoffed. “Nay, it does make a sort of sense. The Bitch watched me curse you, as you killed me . . . ”
“ . . . And while I cursed you, when I found myself so.”
“Aye, and thus we made our troth together, I’ll vow—for better your curse than any other’s kiss, since ‘twas more freely gave by far than anything else I’ve ever had of ye.”
“Good, ‘cousin’ mine!” Tante Ankolee clapped her hands, admiringly, and added: “Let no one claim you incapable of learnin’, ‘specially when it’s t’ your own advantage. This, then, was the Salt Wedding ye fashioned together, wi’ the Bitch herself as officiant . . . and ‘tis this we must dissolve, wi’ her own gracious help.”
Chimed in Parry and Collyer both, almost as one: “And just how, exactly, d’you propose to—”
“Shush, nah, the pair o’ you. Ladies, tell me—can she hear us, this great vessel? Will she be pled to outright, or do she require some further suppliance?”
“She hears you well, Ankolee,” Mistress Rusk assured her. “Nor asks any price at all to treat with you, knowing you by sight as her sister, and her friend.”
“Aye,” Arranz Parry agreed, nodding her dim red head. “For this last passage has been a hard one, and she owns herself tired—as much so, almost, as these men she carries. She longs nothing more than to let herself go, resolve away, let all the varying parts of her return once more to the sea, from whence she helped my lad and Missus Rusk’s boy pluck ‘em.”
“Hmm, I see. Yet why do she nah, then, if ‘tis her dearest wish, as well as theirs?”
“Because she must have a captain to guide her, even on that last voyage, with nowhere to go but down. Even then.”
The men all looked at each other. “Then I’ll stay, and you go,” Rusk announced, prompting a scornful snort from Parry, who replied—
“Yes, to be sure. For you must always have the last word, especially at my expense.”
“Says the man who had the flesh scraped from my bones wi’ bloody barnacles, for the grand sin of sticking my prick in his arse unsolicited!”
Parry went red, then white. “How dare you, sir!” he spat. “Insulting me with every word, every motion, these ten long years and more . . . and now, how dare you think to tweak at me yet further, by trying to put me in your debt once more—”
“Sweet Christ’s own mercy! Then what else do ye want, in all this wide world, you contrary goddamned creature? We have both suffered enough to satisfy even your endless pride, yet if there can be freedom for only one of us so long’s the Bitch needs her captain’s chair filled, then ‘tis my charge, just as she was my ship, long ‘fore y’ever stepped foot onboard! Which is why I will make that sacrifice, and ye won’t think t’stop me!”
“Will I not? Watch me.”
Rusk shook his head, voice softening. “Oh, Jerusha—has this struggle for victory made ye so sore a loser, ye cannot even stand to win? For see, ‘tis you mastered me, from the very outset—brought me down, took all I had and bound me to you forever more, no matter whether ye willed that last part, or no. Who else would I love, who never before cared for any but myself?”
“Your ‘love’ may kiss my hindparts, you pox-rid rogue!”
“My love has, and soundly, as I know ye well recall, ye sour-faced nun’s fart.”
Collyer threw Tante Ankolee a glance, putting in, weakly: “I believe we may be drifting somewhat off the subject, gentlemen . . . ”
But to all concerned’s startlement, ‘twas Mistress Parry who raised her little palm instead, cupping her angry son’s chin once more, as though to force his gaze back to hers. “Enough o’ this,” she ordered. “Jerusalem, decide: To go, or stay? Think on your troubles and trust this ship o’ yours would not wish to keep ye, not if ye truly wish your freedom.”
“When have I ever wished anything else? Oh, Mumma, I have tried so long with all my might to pry myself from this puzzle-trap without result, and God alone knows . . . I am so very weary.”
Haughtiness doused and head drooping beneath this admission’s weight, his silver eyes half-lidded—Rusk looked as though he longed to reach out a comforting hand, though a glance from his own mother sufficed to keep him still, as Arranz Parry nodded. “Yes, child, I know. But tell me this: Were you a terror to this world? Did you do wonders? Did you make the bastards pay, and suffer in the doin’ so?”
“I . . . did, yes, to my best knowledge. Those who collared me learned their error, in the end, surely as this man did his. As those who swung you would have, had I only been able to dock on Cornish soil once more.”
“Well, then—ye have more than done your duty, as our Master
’s old charge states. For sometimes, when it cannot be ‘revenge yourselves or die,’ it can be ‘revenge yourself, and die.’ There is no shame in it. And do not begrudge Cap’n Rusk the chance t’ do but one good deed, in all his long, bad life; let go, let be. Rest, my dear one. Be free.”
Parry just shook his head, helpless, stiff-froze still in his confusion’s midst; Rusk crossed his arms and huffed, looking anywhere else, as Tante Ankolee threw up her hands and the Bitch itself gave out one great groan from stem to stern, similarly frustrated by her second captain-husband’s stubbornness.
But: “Perhaps . . . there is another way,” Collyer eventually began, tentative, feeling his way. “One in which neither of you must stay, and neither of you owe the other.”
As though choreographed, Parry and Rusk turned on him both at once, fists clenched, primed to fight him, too. Cooler heads prevailed, however, along with their mothers’ ghosts’ restraining glares—and at length, under his cousin-sister’s smiling eyes, it was Rusk himself (never known for reasonableness hitherto, though perhaps he’d been taking lessons) who replied: