Story: "Daredevil - Part 4 - Shanghaied"

Napoleon, a survivor from the Mutiny of the Bounty, and a demonic killer in the cobblestoned streets of Toulon, 1793.

This is Part 4 of the story.
If you haven't read Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 yet, please start there.

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SHANGHAIED

TOULON, NOVEMBER 1793

The man could eat. As gaunt and emaciated as he looked — this old white-bearded man with the strange pink-blue irises, an albino — Freund had an apparently insatiable appetite. While the others were simply drinking wine and beer with some bread, Freund was having a feast all to himself. He had already put away a whole leg of lamb, two loaves of bread, a whole cup of butter, half a wheel of cheese, four pints of beer, all with spoonfuls of salt from the rapidly deplenishing salt cellar in the middle of the table. Now he was signaling for more meat, more bread and butter, more beer, as he was carving pieces of cheese from the wheel, sprinkling them with salt.

The innkeeper, a man of perhaps sixty, gloriously fat, with a small upturned nose and clever little pig-eyes, had fired up the kitchen at this ungodly late-early hour, at Jean’s calm insistence, backed up by his ample money-purse.

There were four tables at the inn. One table was empty. At another, Tarun and Zajac — with their two prostitutes, Esperanza and Destine — were raucously playing a game of dice, the game itself just an excuse for the laughing, the launching into exuberant toasts, the recitation of filthy poems, the telling of long stories, acted out with pantomimed playfulness. In the corner, at a table by herself, a tall redhead (her name, Lamb recalled, was Christiane) seemed to hang around the prostitutes, not quite part of them, not a prostitute herself, always on the outskirts, on the periphery, as she was here in the room, separated from them, but close by.

At the final table, closest to the kitchen, were Lamb, Jean, Freund, and Naboleone, with Beatrice clinging to his arm, as she periodically cast oddly furtive glances over at Christiane, looking, Lamb thought, at turns angry, frightened, longing, in a fascinating study of emotions flickering across her features, like a shadow-play.

“So, are the two of you traveling companions?” Lamb asked, turning his attention back to Freund and Jean.

Freund, mouth full of salted cheese, looked over at Jean.

“For a journey longer than you would imagine,” Jean replied. “We come most recently from the fine city of Vienna, or Wien, as they, themselves, call it, the Viennese, hard, closed-off, outwardly unfriendly people with soft, open, friendly hearts once you get to know them. Beautiful place. Wonderful music.”

“The city of Mozart,” Lamb said.

“Yes,” Jean agreed. “Mozart, that great son of Salzburg, and great adopted son of Vienna. Unfortunately for us and for him, or perhaps fortunately for him, depending on your perspective on eternity, Wolfgang Amadeus Theophilius Gottlieb has passed through the veil.”

“Dead?” Lamb shook his head. “I did not know.”

Jean nodded, took a draft of red wine from the cup in front of him.

“Dead two years ago next month. I should know. I was at his deathbed.” He broke off a piece of bread, chewed it carefully, tasting, swallowed another gulp of red wine, smacked his lips. “Wolfgang was filled with the Holy Spirit to the end, to the very end. His final work, left uncompleted, his Requiem, makes the angels cry.”

“At his deathbed?” Naboleone leaned forward. “C’est vrais, you knew the great Mozart?”

“Yes,” Jean said simply, not boasting, just stating a fact. “I knew Mozart since he was a young boy.”

Naboleone squinted, skeptical. “Were you also very young boy? You now forty years, peut-etre. Pas beaucoup plus.”

“I am far older than you might think.” Jean smiled. “Appearances can be deceiving.” He turned to Lamb. “Such as yourself, Samuel. At first impression, I would put you at, let’s say, somewhere in your thirties, perhaps even mid- to late thirties. But I sense that is not right. You are quite a bit younger, no?”

“I am nineteen.” Lamb gave him his practiced grin, his practiced shrug, and his practiced line: “Maybe I just live life faster than others.”

"Maybe so. There is a certain energy about you, a fast shimmering. "Jean was serious. “Myself, I live life slower than others.”

“At least you live your life moving forward,” Freund said cryptically. “It’s easier that way, believe me.” He sliced off another piece of cheese, from the wheel, salted it, chewed quickly, not really tasting, and washed it down with beer.

Jean smiled, turned back to Naboleone. “I first met Mozart, oh, thirty years ago. Wolfgang was five years old, and already writing his first compositions in his father Leopold’s notebook. Five years old! How do you explain such natural, inborn genius as Mozart’s? A pure gift of grace. What other proof of God do you need?”

“Hey, Beatrice,” Esperanza motioned from the other table. “Come join us for a while. This game is more fun with an odd number of players.”

Beatrice squeezed Naboleone’s shoulder. “Je reviens, mon cher.” He smiled at her as she got up and left.

Lamb noticed that Christiane, in the corner, had looked up at the mention of Beatrice’s name, then quickly, studiously, looked away, out the window.

Naboleone leaned in, challenging Jean: “Proof of God?”

“Oh, don’t get him started on that subject.” Lamb shook his head, took a swallow of wine. “My friend, Carlo, is allergic to religion.”

“Aren’t we all.” Jean nodded. “Religion is our straightjacket, and we must all make our own escape. The origin of the word itself, ‘re-ligare’, means to ‘bind up’. And we do let it tie us up in knots. Now, God, of course, God is an entirely different matter.” He winked at Naboleone. “We should speak of God sometime, you and I. Just don’t bring God into religion, nor religion into God.”

Lamb suddenly had a memory of a not so different situation and a similar discussion, aboard the ‘Bounty’, more than four years ago. It had been weeks before the mutiny. There had been four of them around the table in the small pantry where Bligh took his meals, since the Captain’s Quarters had been repurposed as a sort of greenhouse for the breadfruit plants that were their precious cargo. Around that table, at the occasion Lamb was remembering, had been Bligh, Fletcher Christian, Lamb himself, and … yes … Peter Skinner.

Peter, that tall, gangly string-bean, Lamb’s own age, twitchy, quick movements, quick witted, quick to smile, friendly, well liked by all, outgoing, a talker, where Lamb kept to himself, silent, brooding, a thinker, a schemer. Peter was his opposite, in most ways. Lord, how long had it been since he last thought about Peter Skinner, the other Midshipman on the Bounty? The one who had joined Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers, while Lamb joined Bligh in the 23-footer launch, set adrift on the open sea.

The topic, as Lamb recalled, had been about the mercy of God. Mercy, the Hebrew word ‘hesed’, or ‘chesed’, which, according to Bligh, should actually be translated not as ‘mercy’, as it was in the King James Bible, but as ‘steadfast love’, ‘loyalty’, a strong bond, a sworn reciprocal relationship. In retrospect, thinking back, was the betrayal of loyalty between Captain and Master’s Mate in the air that day? Did Bligh, somehow, already know, or suspect, that he could no longer trust Fletcher Christian, his first officer?

And this made Lamb again reflect on Naboleone, and his own decision this evening that he would bind (re-ligare?) his fate to the little man, that he would put his full trust in Naboleone.

After all, what has King George ever done for me, he thought. What has England ever done for me, other than send me on a journey for breadfruit, ending in the horror of that three thousand mile ocean-journey in the open boat, weighed down with nineteen starved and thirsting souls, fighting for our lives against natives on Tofoa, chased by cannibals, and always the wind and the rain and the waves and the never-ending raging of the sea and the bone-deep cold and the cramping muscles.

He shook his head clear of the thoughts, returned to the conversation, noticing that they had switched to French. Though he was hopeless at speaking it, his tongue unable to work its way around the gurgle of syllables, Lamb could follow French well enough by ear, though he struggled to keep up whenever the pace went beyond a trot to a canter, and was lost at full gallop. Luckily, Jean was keeping the tempo andante, slowing Naboleone down with a subtle hand signal whenever the other worked up too much steam.

“So, my Corsican friend,” Jean said, “what is your opinion of Pasquale Paoli?”

“Paoli? He used to be my hero.” Naboleone made a dismissive gesture.

“Used to be?”

“Yes, before I saw his true colors. Paoli is a traitor, who will sell Corsica to the English dogs. Once, Paoli was like a father to me, but he turned out to be just another coward, another sweaty politician clinging to his small corner of the world, the barren little rock where he can be prince. He professes to love Corsica even as he prepares to whore her out to the English King George. Well, he can have his little rock. For now.” Naboleone was slurring, speaking French with a heavier Corsican accent than usual. “I used to believe Corsica must be freed from the French yoke. Now I know differently. Better the French than the English. And better even them, the English dogs — pardon me, Lamb — than leaving her unruled and unruly. Corsica is not fit to rule herself. She must be ruled, brought to heel with a strong hand on the leash.”

“And you’re the one to do it?”

“I am. I will.”

“Wielding the mighty arm of the French Revolutionary Army?”

“Yes. This is what Corsica deserves. She asks for it. I will give it to her.” Naboleone sat up in his seat, jutting his chin out, eyes flaming, nostrils flaring. Was he so drunk that he did not notice the turn in the conversation? Did he not see that Jean seemed to know who he was, his true allegiance to the French revolutionaries, not the royalists, not the Piedmontese dragoons?

“And how,” Jean leaned in closer, “does the French Revolutionary Army feel about being commandeered by a Corsican? A Corsican with an unusual name, a slightly … comical … name.”

Naboleone slammed down his cup, which, luckily, was nearly empty, the rim spitting only a few heavy drops of red wine, a small splatter, like droplets of blood on the table top.

“The French will eat my name! They will choke on it!”

“And what a name,” Jean lowered his voice. “Naboleone di Buenaparte.”

Lamb could see it, the sudden sobering, evident first in Naboleone’s face, the eyes focusing, the lips tightening, then in his whole body, his posture like that of a cornered cat, muscles tense, head forward, hands gripping the table.

“Your secret,” Jean put his hand on Naboleone’s arm, “is safe with me.” Leaning back, calmly taking a sip of wine, eyes twinkling over the rim of the cup. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “But it won’t be a secret much longer, if you continue to draw attention to yourself. The bald man with the prominent front teeth is headed this way. Smile. Laugh as if I just told a fabulous joke.”

Naboleone’s quite realistic belly-laugh filled the room, as he slapped the table, then his knees, then wiped tears from his eyes, finally making a great show of catching his breath, as Zajac leaned over.

“What’s so funny?” The bald man was grinning, displaying those two rodent-like incisors, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Evidently some clever wordplay, in French,” Lamb offered. “Something about fish and poison. I think. I’m afraid it stretched the limits of my comprehension of the language. You speak French?”

Zajac shook his head, winked. “Just enough to order food and drink, a bed, and someone to share it with for the night.” He turned to Naboleone. “Beatrice just saw you turn all green around the gills. Wanted me to make sure everything was OK. That’s all.”

Naboleone waved him off, play-acting that he was still catching his breath from the fake bout of laughter. “Bien, bien. Very funny story.” He turned to catch Beatrice looking over at them, blew her a kiss, and she smiled back.

“Well, Beatrice articulated — or since we are doing wordplays, should I say she tart-iculated, heh heh — that she is lonesome for you, my friend. Tarun and I are about ready to retire to our respective rooms, with our respective companions, for more fun and games.”

“Tell Beatrice I arrive one moment. Bien?”

Zajac raised one eyebrow. “Sure, I’ll tell her you ‘arrive one moment’.” His imitation of Naboleone’s twisted diction was spot on. Lamb covered his grin with the back of his hand.

“Looks like you’re getting Shanghaied by the lovely lady,” Freund winked at Naboleone. He was tucking into his second helping of meat, bread, and butter.

“Shang-hay-et?” Naboleone looked confused.

“Ah, sorry,” Freund said, his odd blue-pink eyes going up and to the left. “That’s not what it’s called … yet. I mean … um … press-ganged. Yes, press-ganged.”

Lamb flashed on a memory. Fletcher Christian and his press-gang, forcing him, the twelve year old Samuel, onto the crew of the ‘Britannia’ for its second trip to the West Indies. This was three years before the ‘Bounty’. The seething hatred welled up in him suddenly. After all this time, how much he still despised Fletcher Christian, the man who had robbed him of his free will.

Since that moment, twelve years old, he no longer had a choice. Everything that happened since then was one long press-gang, an irrevocable loss of freedom. Even now, he found himself still tossed on a sea of circumstances, forever powerless to control his destiny. Circumstances, like this war, this siege of Toulon, and stronger men, more powerful men, men like Naboleone, men like General O’Hara, were the wind and the waves in his life now.

General O’Hara. O’Hara! How he loathed the man. His hatred for O’Hara was, if not deeper than what he felt for Fletcher Christian, at least more immediate, more intense. Just thinking about O’Hara’s florid, fleshy face, made Lamb’s blood rise.

Shaking off the thoughts, Lamb looked around the room, now half empty. Tarun and Zajac had left, taking Esperanza and Destine with them. Christiane had left as well. Beatrice was speaking with the fat innkeeper. Perhaps, since Naboleone was dragging his feet, she was now baiting the hook to catch another customer.

Naboleone looked around the room, furtively, then leaned close to Jean, speaking in a low voice, but with a burning intensity. “How you know my name? What you want? Who you are?”

“Who am I? Just a traveler, a pilgrim.”

“What you want, pill-grim? Money?”

Jean laughed, large, white teeth contrasting his olive skin and dark, shaggy beard. “Money is useful. But I have all I could ever need. Thank you for offering.”

“What, then?”

“Just … your time. As I said, your secret is safe with me. Go, go to your redheaded woman. We will talk again. That is all I ask. Come back in a few hours, or this evening, and the night after that, and the night after, and we will speak of God, of power, of glory, of choices.”

“Just talk?” Naboleone’s eyes were shrewd. “That cannot be.”

“That is all. It is enough. Trust me.” Jean leaned back in his chair. “And you can trust me. After all, since I know what I know, and since you still have your freedom, you know that I have not betrayed you. Nor will I.” He waved his hand in the direction of Beatrice. “Now go. Get press-ganged for the night.” He looked over at Freund. “Shang-haied? Really? That’s what it will be called? Strange.”

Freund squinted, shrugged, mouth full of salted and buttered bread.

Naboleone gave Jean a long look, glanced over at Lamb, a meaningful look, saying: well, what else can we do.

Beatrice, evidently tired of waiting, took this precise moment to decide that she had finally had enough, left the innkeeper, left the inn.

Naboleone got up to follow her.

And then …

… a wild scream pierced the silence.

— END PART 4 - TO BE CONTINUED —

Click here to go to Part 5 of the story.