The Blessed Shore (third excerpt) Banners of unity are flown
A few more hundred unedited words from the psychedelic pirate novel that I am working on throughout November, and probably December as well.
The banner has been spread between the foredecks of the three ships. They sail side by side, tethered at the rails by the fleet spars, that protrude like banks of oars; stiff columns of insect legs that move back and forth as one, maintaining a neat and even distance between the hulls, holding them apart by an orderly six-arm length; the trio of wooden figureheads aligned: The blindfolded card player who hides their hand from the horizon, the birthing mermaid, and the bearded sea god, bearing an unstopped amphora that he tips in the direction of the ocean; all three rising and then falling from the heads of the waves in unison, as though they move towards some previously agreed upon goal.
The men who are working the deck, now pull on the ropes that trail down from the yards, ever so slowly raising the banner against the aligned trinity of the foremasts, the bodies up in the shrouds moving ahead of the encroaching tide of fabric, guiding its ascent. At the heel of the masts a crumpled painting of the English countryside is beginning to take form, facing towards the aft of the vessels, the spires and rooftops of distant towns spreading across the valleys as they uncrease, the hills emerging around them, unfurling like cocoons from within the canvas that is itself slowly rising like a new day to usurp the natural horizon, a few hours before the arrival of dusk. The sun, that has been long diminished to a white glare lingering behind a bank of indistinct cloud, and that is now starting to dip in the sky, is suddenly gifted with a changed objective, putting on the mask of a painted sun, stylised with compass points, illuminating from behind an Arcadian scene that, now fully expanded, stands as the backdrop of a play in which the men on the three vessels are expected to perform, the sheet pulled taut against the wind that wants to bend it to purpose as a sail.
John Day watches the spectacle with removed interest, outwardly indifferent to the grandeur of the painting that has been spread before him across the decks of the three ships, that now bear it across the open seas. Nor does he appear stirred by the fine detail embodied within the grand work that was, no doubt, intended by its creator – the steward of an army of apprentices – as a dry run for a more considered piece, commissioned as a wall or ceiling fresco of some stately building.
“My understanding is that such a thing was an invention of pirates, but has now been accepted by society and grows increasingly common,” he says.
“That is so,” says Meade. “Among the privateer fleets its was called a bond of venture. It symbolises unity between ships and crews, even as they are separated by the winds and the waves, and by the many tides fate that conspire to pull them apart.”
“In another life, I would drink to that,” says Day, soberly.
“I have heard Clive Vaughan and Phillip Whitfield, both long-hanged for their crimes, named as the progenitors,” says Meade.
“This remains their unlikely legacy, seeded into the culture of the present day,” ponders Day. “It cheers me that others have taken the same path that we intend.”
“It is an impressive gesture,” says Meade. “As to whether it inspires impressive action... The biggest of them all is said to have traversed the decks of seven ships. The unity that those crews declared among themselves, and to the open seas, did not last.”
“Captain. Mr Day,” says Goodger, the sea artist, who has come up on the quarterdeck.
“Speak,” says Meade.
“Captain, it has become an encumbrance. There has been a fracture spotted in one of the spars at our port. The Favourable Game makes a feisty action on the waves.”
“A few moments more,” says Meade. “Ensure that the men on the other ships are ready at their stations.”
“It is a composite landscape,” I assume,” says Day, academically. “I recognise the church spire of Braygate where it flies at present above the deck of Captain Shapley's vessel. That town ordinarily lies nowhere near the coast.”
“I took it for a well-executed fancy,” says Meade.
He casts a final glance across the painted panorama that has been laid out before him.
“Very well,” he says to himself.
Raising his head he calls out: “Free the spars!”
“On my count,” yells Bos'n William Essex, who remains clad in the fraying, sea-worn garmentry of the late Captain Timothy.
“One.”
“Two”
The “three” catches awkwardly in his throat. He rallies and forces out a strangled “Now!”
The cross-ties that have been suddenly loosened from the rails of The Favourable Game and The Surewell swing downward on their hinges towards The Lucksford Birth striking the sides in clattering unison, hammering noisily against the mid-decks at the first impact, and then a few times after as a quieter percussion, awakening those sailors who are asleep within; a few fracturing under contact; one completely broken and held tenuously together by the sinew of its cordage.
As the freed ships on either side begin to lurch away, a sustained rip of heavy cloth – a sound that Meade associates with storms and as an omen of toppling masts – drowns out the incessant noise of the waves. Before him, the painted scenery and its artificial skyline is being rent apart at both ends, the tears commencing among the stylised hills of an England that never was, now travelling upward on meandering wayward courses that are governed by the undulating movements of three ships; the fabric of the blue sky straining into a likeness of unbraided rope as the distance between the vessels continues to widen and the material struggles to maintain its laboured union. Meade feels the ship shudder slightly as it is severed from The Surewell. Their separation from The Favourable Game is somewhat less tidy, with long strips of the torn banner flying as ragged pennants from the wound that has been rent into the landscape.
“Have it brought down and stored,” he commands, as on either side of him the two ships lumber unhampered atop the cresting waves, with their own backward-facing glimpses of England now being drawn down from their foremasts.
“What is to happen to the pieces?” enquires Day.
“At the conclusion of a successful voyage, it is tradition for such things to be stitched together and displayed, either within or without one of the warehouses at the Port of London, or at some other place of import” says Meade.
“Captain Meade,” says Day. “I think that you have created your first holy object.”
“I venture that the oceans of the world would lie flat and still were it not for the perpetual warring of civilisations...”
Three men, whose days have been clouded by failure, are herded by the waves towards a life of piracy: Robert Meade seeks forgiveness from one who is indifferent to his guilt. Derrick Shapley fights on the sea for the rights of those who labour on the land. Charles Spry – 'the pink pirate' – sails into battle out of rose-coloured clouds of powdered coral smoke.
They are united under the flag of John Day, who has been delivered from the priesthood to run his family's trading empire, following the deaths of his older brothers, and who now seeks a back door to political power by captivating the souls of common men.
As whale song is carried on tidal winds from the Arctic Circle to the pinnacle of Scotland, and the islands of the Southern Atlantic collapse and burn to rubble, these four men, bound to a common cause, will find their union tested as they are pulled by the tides of fate towards divergent compass points.