The Black-Eyed Susan
J.A. Clement
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ON DARK SHORES: PARALLELS
The Black-Eyed Susan
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Published by Weasel Green Press
Copyright 2011 JA Clement
ISBN: 978-1-908212-03-0
On Dark Shores: The Lady
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Table of Contents
Cover
Beginning
Other books by JA Clement
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The Black-Eyed Susan
“I’m sure you see my problem,” Copeland toyed with the papers on his desk. “If I let you have more time to pay the money back word would get around, and every ne’er-do-well in town would be begging for the same. It would be very bad for business.”
“Sir, I’m not one that finds it easy to beg, but if you say so, I’ll beg. My cargo was ruined in the great storm, when some fool of a sailor left the hatches open.” Striding over to the window, agitated, the Captain did not see the smirk which passed across the moneylender’s face. “Please, let me have more time. If you take my ship my son and I will be without a home, without a livelihood and without honour. The Black-Eyed Susan is my life; I’ve sailed in her forty years, man and boy. My son was born aboard her and my wife, God rest her soul, died there not three days ago.” He turned back stiffly. “I’m begging you, sir; give me a little more time. I’ll pay whatever you ask….”
Copeland was not listening to the Captain; he was picturing the Black-Eyed Susan. The ship was sleek and fast and, with his own man at the helm, would pay him well for all the trouble to which he had gone to get hold of her….
The silence grew. Captain Vansel’s face was gaunt with grief and loss; running one hand through his greying hair, only iron self-control kept him going. The doctor had sworn that a very expensive medicine would cure his wife’s illness; that it had failed so spectacularly was incomprehensible to the Captain – though less so to Copeland who had suggested the treatment in the first place.
“My dear Captain, if you didn’t want to part with the boat, you shouldn’t have put her up as security for the loan. Your allotted time is up; give me the money or leave at dawn tomorrow. Those were my terms, and as you have failed to make your payments, you leave me no choice.” He opened a drawer, took out a penknife and began to pare his nails. “Are you still here, Captain? I do assure you, there’s nothing further to be said.”
“Mr. Copeland… another month… a week… I beg of you…”
“Blakey!” The door opened to reveal a bear of a man. “Ah, Blakey, the good Captain here was just leaving.”
“No, Copeland! My ship! My good name! Not for my sake, but my son’s, I beg you -” The Captain’s voice broke slightly as Blakey took his arm and began to pull him away and down the stairs.
“What ship? What good name?” Copeland enquired smoothly. “You forget yourself, Captain; as of five minutes ago you’re possessed of neither.”
“You leech! You damned-” The Captain’s voice broke off into an abrupt hiss of breath and after a moment Blakey shut the door behind them. Copeland returned to his tattered leather chair. Another day, tediously similar to every other. It would be refreshing to have someone actually pay the whole sum on time for once; still, though novel, it would hardly be profitable. No, these little scenes were simply another part of his everyday affairs, and the price of his occupation.
He paused to listen. The Captain, if he had any sense, would resign himself to the inevitable and leave. Blakey was a man whose job appeared to be remarkably well-suited to his natural temperament, and he had dealt with many a similar scene before this. No, to judge by the muffled thumps and thuds in the stairwell, the Captain had more determination than sense – and less money than either, like so many of Copeland’s clients.
The moneylender shifted his chair to look out of the window at the bloody sunset. “The doctor did his job well, and it seems that Able Seaman Hardy has done as required. However, I don’t recall having it recorded anywhere that his sabotage of the cargo should offset the money I loaned him; and besides, as the new owner of the Susan, I can scarcely let that sort of thing go unpunished…”
A short time later, Blakey knocked on the door. “What do you want me to do with the Captain, Mr Copeland?”
“Leave him somewhere near the ship; we wouldn’t want him to be late in leaving tomorrow. Oh, and ask around until you find our good friend, Able Seaman Hardy.”
“Yes, Mr. Copeland. Do you want to see him?”
The moneylender stretched one hand in front of him and examined the pink little nails absently. “No, precisely the reverse. I don’t want to see him. And I think it’d be for the best if no-one else does – unless he can be persuaded of the benefits of silence, of course.”
“Right you are, Mr. Copeland.”
Copeland listened to the bodyguard’s heavy tread as he dragged the former Captain over his shoulder and hauled him away to regain consciousness elsewhere. An efficient man in his own way, Blakey, but lacking in imagination. Still, Copeland mused, seeing what the man was capable of without it, it was possibly just as well.
Blakey dragged the unconscious Captain to an alleyway down by the docks, and left him slumped in a corner. He was mildly surprised that the man was still unconscious - he had not hit him especially hard - but did not think much of it and strode away in the gathering dusk. He was set to find Seaman Hardy and, not having been in his job for long, wanted to get the job done without too much delay.
He knew just where to find the crew of the Black-Eyed Susan - their first night in after a voyage, most of them would be in various states of undress in the brothel recently set up by a woman from out of town. Previously a flea-bitten tip, she renamed it the “Black Cat Brothel” and set it up in what appeared to be relative opulence to the working population of the town, and was even acceptable to the merchants who lived on the wide, gracious streets higher up. She employed a talented chef from the city and kept a decent salon in an upstairs room for those merchants who had money to spare and wished to play cards. The fisherfolk themselves were not well off; but being to all appearances as shrewd as she was handsome, the Madam made sure that she had an offer to suit all purses. She was shrewd enough to keep separate entrances for merchants and sailors, however, and it was to the sailors’ entrance that Blakey was heading.
He paused at the door uncertainly, and was gestured in by the doorkeeper, an older lady with a sharp face.
“What is it you’re looking for, my lad?” She grinned at his expression. “Old or young, blonde or brunette, we have ’em all here.”
“Not one of your women, a customer. A sailor.”
Her friendliness evaporated in a second. “We don’t want any trouble here. What do you want with him?”
“I’ve been sent by Mr Copeland-” Interrupted by a great ruckus from inside, Blakey pushed past her into the lounge which was full of laughing, catcalling men, sitting with their drinks to wait until they were called. A handsome, solidly-built woman with brassy blonde hair erupted into the room, propelling before her a cowering shrimp of a man with his arms raised to shield his head from the blows she was dealing him with what appeared to be some kind of short cudgel.
“You scum!” She hit the man again. “Don’t think that because she’s a whore you can treat her with so little respect. Brute!” The sailor tripped and fell under a table. The woman, incandescently furious, turned to the startled men. “This animal has seen fit to raise his hand to one of my girls. Anyone who deals with him will not be charged for the evening’s entertainment.”
There wa
s a two second pause; every man in the place jumped to his feet but in that heartbeat, Blakey had reached her side, and picked the man from the floor. “Seaman Hardy, I believe?”
“You know him?”
Blakey deftly twisted the man’s arm up behind his back before turning to the woman. “You are?”
“You may call me Madam. Do you know this man?”
“Mr. Copeland has sent me to... have a conversation with him.” Blakey met her eye meaningfully. “I shall take him off your hands.”
“The offer stands,” she returned slowly, and surprised a sudden, genuine smile out him.
“Very kind, Madam, but not necessary.”
She watched as he dragged the man out of there, nodding to the doorkeeper on his way past.
When Blakey had finished with the sailor he felt his day’s work had been fulfilled, and went straight onto the tavern. Walking past the dusk-shrouded alleyway, he wondered idly how long it had taken before the old Captain had come round, but it did not occur to him to stop and check that the Captain was not still huddled in the darkness. He had not noticed the grey pallor of the man’s face, or the laboured effort of his breathing; he did not wonder if the Captain would sink deeper into unconsciousness rather than waking. Blakey, young and relatively fit, had not stopped to question that the older, work-worn man could survive the extra trauma at all; so he walked past the alleyway all unknowing.
Many hours later, as the night faded to gray, the men of The Black-Eyed Susan staggered back from their haunts to join the ship. One by one they filtered in, and were ticked off the list by an anxious boy.
“Are you Captain in his absence?” one sailor grinned.
“He isn’t back yet....” The Captain’s son fiddled with the lantern. “When you were out, did you see him?”
“Not since I left the ship, boy, no. But he’ll be back soon; never late, your father!”
“No, he never is. He’s never been this late before. It’s probably nothing, of course, only....”
“Don’t worry, lad, he’ll be discussing a new way to set his sails with some old salt down the waterfront, you can lay money on it!”
The boy’s face cleared; it was true that if he had got into conversation, his father could lose hours at a stretch. However, the sailor wandered casually over to the ship’s doctor and asked a few questions, and had the boy looked back at them, he would have seen that neither of the two looked at all happy with the situation.
Gradually the rest of the crew filed in and, one by one, confessed to having no knowledge of the whereabouts of their Captain. Normally this would have been the occasion of much ribaldry and lewd humour; but facing this boy, newly bereaved of his mother and demanding information of them with a fragile air of authority, each of them sobered up as best he could and cudgelled beer-fuddled brains for answers.
As it became light enough to see, a search-party left the ship: the boy, the ship’s doctor, a few other trusted and more sober deckhands. Following the trail of the night before, it did not take them long to come upon the alleyway where the Captain still slumped against the wall, unmoving. The boy stood back to let the ship’s doctor take over. As the little man knelt, the boy took a firm grip of himself, knowing what the answer would be; but when the doctor looked up, the truth plain to see in his face, it still winded him like a blow to the gut. The boy staggered for a moment, then pulled himself together as his father would have wanted.
Carrying the Captain with reverence and grief, the sombre group made its way back to the ship. The sailors, against their usual practice, were all grouped on the deck in the cold. Few were talking. As the boy came back into sight, they leaned eagerly over the side for news; but in the washed-out light, his eyes were like bruises and again no words were necessary in the still, quiet air.
Dawn came and the crimson sky was stark against the white sails as the Black-Eyed Susan slipped silently out of the harbour. On her deck lay the body of her Captain, grey and cold; and at her tiller a slender dark-haired boy, half-blinded with tears and rage, turned one last look on the town and vowed vengeance for the death of his father.
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Other books by JA Clement
The story you have just read takes place some ten years before the start of “On Dark Shores: The Lady”, in which more will be discovered about Scarlock, and the means by which the old Captain’s son intends to take his vengeance begin to settle into place. This is the first book in the “On Dark Shores” fantasy series.
What others have said about “On Dark Shores: The Lady”
"Clement's stark, lyrical narrative, especially during descriptive passages, created an aura of darkness and mystery so chilling, I shivered." --BJ at www.darksideofthecovers.com/
"Clement's greatest strength as a writer is her characterization. It is amazing how well she can breathe life into a character, revealing their every nuance in a minimal amount of words." --Craig at https://csfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/
“Sometimes you find a book that is such a delight to read, you don’t want to pry your eyes away from the page; On Dark Shores: The Lady is such a book..” A.F. Stewart at https://afstewartblog.blogspot.com/
