Drowned Wednesday(10)

‘What ship? And what are you doing on that treasure marker?’

‘Uh, my ship was the Steely Bed. It sank. I swam here.’

There was a muttering aboard the boat. Arthur couldn’t clearly hear all the words, but he heard ‘claim,’ ‘ours,’ ‘stick ’im and sink ’im,’ and the sound of someone being knocked on the head and grunting in pain. He hoped it was the Denizen who said ‘stick ’im,’ since he was fairly sure he was the ‘’im’ being referred to.

‘Give way,’ shouted the Denizen in charge. The oars dipped into the sea again, and the boat moved forward. As it came alongside the buoy, Arthur got his first real look at the crew, with the Denizen holding the bull’s-eye lantern opening its shutters to spread the light around.

They were not a good-looking bunch. There were eight men and five women. They might have started with the usual handsome features of Denizens, but the great majority of them had eye patches, livid scars across their faces, and an illustrated catalogue of tattoos, ranging from ships to storms to skulls and snakes, up and down their forearms, on cheeks and foreheads and bared midriffs. They wore many different styles of clothing, all in bright colours, the single common feature being a wide leather belt that supported a cutlass and knife. Half of them also had red knitted caps, and the leader, a broad-shouldered male Denizen with scarlet sunbursts tattooed on his cheeks, wore a leather Napoleon hat that looked a little too small for him.

He smiled at Arthur, revealing a mouth with most of its teeth missing. Of the remaining four or five, three were capped in gold.

Pirates, Arthur figured.

But there was something strangely non-aggressive about them too. Something that reminded Arthur of people playing dress-up. Surely real pirates would just kill him without a second thought, not sit quietly looking at him. And one of them was drawing a picture of the scene with a charcoal stick in a sketchbook.

‘The Steelibed,’ said the leader. ‘Can’t say I’ve heard of her. When did she sink? Carrying any cargo?’

‘Maybe a day ago,’ said Arthur cautiously. ‘Not much cargo. Um, cotton and stuff.’

‘And stuff,’ repeated the leader, with a wink at Arthur. ‘Well, with a treasure marker in front of us, we’ll not bother with ‘cotton and stuff’ if there’s anything below. The question is, are you claiming salvage?’

‘Uh, I don’t know,’ said Arthur cautiously. ‘Maybe. I might.’

‘Well, if you’re not sure, then it don’t matter!’ declared the leader, with a laugh that was echoed by the crew. ‘We’ll just have a look below and if there’s anything left, we’ll have it up. Then we’ll be on our way, and you can get on with your own business.’

‘Hold on!’ cried Arthur. ‘Take me with you!’

‘Lizard, take a line and have a glance under the buoy,’ said the leader to one of the crew, a small woman who had blue scales tattooed all over her face. At least Arthur hoped they were tattoos and not actual scales. She undid her belt, kicked off her boots, and quickly dived over the side with a rope held between her teeth.

‘Please, I need to get to land,’ said Arthur. ‘Somewhere I can make a phone call.’

‘Ain’t no phone calls in the Border Sea,’ said one of the Denizens. ‘Exchange got flooded and they never built a new one on the high ground.’

‘Shut yer trap, One-Ear,’ instructed the leader. He turned back to Arthur. ‘You want to come aboard the Moth as a passenger, then?’

‘That’s your ship?’ asked Arthur. ‘The Moth?’

‘Aye, the Moth,’ replied a Denizen who had a shark’s toothy mouth tattooed around his own. ‘What’s wrong with that? Moths can be extremely frightening. If you get trapped in a cupboard with a whole passel of moths —’ ‘I didn’t mean anything bad about the name,’ said Arthur. He thought quickly. ‘It’s just I was surprised to be picked up by such a famous ship.’

‘What?’ asked one of the other Denizens. ‘The Moth?’

‘Yes. Such a famous ship and its crew of . . . uh . . . such renowned pirates!’

Arthur’s speech was met by a sudden silence. Then the crew of the boat erupted, falling over themselves as they tried to run out the oars again. All of them shouted at once:

‘Pirates! Where?! What pirates?! Back to the ship!’

‘Hold hard!’ roared the leader. He waded in among the crew, slapping them open-handed across the backs of their heads till they subsided onto the slats. Then he turned to Arthur.