The Dead Horse

Oh, a poor old came riding by,

and we say so, and we know so,

oh a poor old man came riding by,

oh, poor old man.

Peter is dying too slowly. His skin is red and blotchy, glowing with quiet rot, blisters the size of pinpricks making the backs of his hands and cheeks look like sandpaper. He is some feet away from me, twisted in his blankets on the floorboards like me. He shivers and groans, the sounds leaving his mouth thin and high. He had been dying this death since before we found this ship. Before we came down to St. Augustine, before we fled Jamestown, before we knew our days skulking the quiet roads and low snows of Boston would end with the wrong Englishman slain. Peter’s flesh was being eaten away before all of this. Now, today, after this week upon the sea, I understand that his mind had always been next for the disease that had for so long been climbing the ladder of his spine, and that when the mind is eaten it is eaten only after the battle of flesh is lost. To the deck with us all in not ten minutes. The first whispers of a silvery-pink sunrise trickle through the gun holes and hairline splits in the hull. From my wad of blankets on the floorboards, I watch the men above and around me stir, those not clinging to sleep sipping at bottles and stuffing pinches of tobacco under their tongues. I watch Peter, shaking and wet and red, and fear that my friend who fled with me all this way, like foxes from the hunt, did so only to die further from home than we had ever ventured. Our Quartermaster kicks at the doors above and like a hundred sweating rats, the crew climb from their hammocks and onto their feet and face the day’s work. I climb up also, with stiff limbs and a dull ache in the bones of my chest, and haul Peter to his feet. He cannot die there, on the floor. He cannot die like this, not yet.

Says, aye, Old man, your horse will die,

and we say so, and we know so,

and if he dies, we’ll tan his hide,

oh, poor old man.

They all tell me, smiling through mouthfuls of their rations and rum and lime shoveled into their cheek with a blunt knife shared between them, that our first month is the fulfilling of our debt to the ship. That she is seeing us pay her back for passage and work and the letter of marque that afforded us a place aboard her when we should be somewhere less free and less alive by right. I was to be paid ninety-six reales for enlisting, but took only sixty for mine and Peter’s expedited coasting-off. She’s a French vessel, blessed by their King, a beast in pursuit of Spanish-Dutch prey in the thinning gunsmoke of some war I thought came to a close years ago. Maybe it did. Maybe we’re the only ship keeping it alive anymore. I have never sailed much, and Peter never has. They knew this, could smell it, I’m sure. We had to take but thirty each for that. I did not have time to spend it. But for this month that has barely even begun, we pay for it. We have been on the sea for a week or so, bound for Cuba, we watched the coast of Florida as we went until it could not be watched any more, watching for any ship flying colours that are not ours. Today, I have no skin left on the palms of my hands, torn away in waxy rolls of unsettled scab by the sailropes. The webbing between my fingers and the creases at the corners of my eyes are crusted with salt, the crushed-glass breath of the ocean settling on the places on me where I am softest to make them someday strong, or if not, make them unfeeling. I am not afforded a hammock, not yet, not until I settle my debt with her, with the ship. During the day, I work until the places from where I bleed are sealed by salted air and sweat, and I eat only enough to remain upright. At night, I curl into my blankets and scrape one of my reales against the hulls, then place it in my mouth and suck the salt and water from it until I fall asleep. In my dreams, I see Catherine and the forest roads of Virginia in the spring time and then the hangman atop his gallows that reach into the clouds and then I awaken fumbling for a pistol that is not there. As I work, Peter works too, beside me, whispering to himself. He stares at the horizon. Stares into it, stares through it, stares over the curve of the faraway blue, then past that.

And if he don’t, we’ll ride him again,

And we say so, and we know so,

We’ll ride him ‘til I don’t know when,

Oh, poor old man.

When we were first set upon by pyrates, the sun was still setting, still climbing down its ladder to the far side of the world. Our bells rung out and the padlocked longarms were unlocked and tossed with indiscretion into any free pairs of hands. Handling the musket came easily to me, the funnelling of its powder and stuffing of shot, the one thing on this tub I could do well. I saw them only from afar, through the black smoke of our rifles and the splintering of wood dashed by their cannon shot. Fire. Brace. Lay. Load. Stand. Fire. Again and again, as you bleed from a dozen small wounds you did not know you had and lose your hearing in the cacophony of iron all around. Peter was a tremendous shot back in kinder days, just tremendous. I’ve watched him take the beak off a finch from fifty paces for the prize of a drink or a new deck of cards back in Virginia. Peter still lives, in his slight way, but that prize shot died weeks ago. I watch him try and load his gun with his thin, colourless arms and fingers of mere bone and paper. I have to look away. 

And for one long month, I rode him hard

And we say so, and we know so,

For one long month, we all rode him hard,

Oh, poor old man.

After hours that must have been only minutes, there is silence. And the ringing of our bells again. A victory won, a defeat of an enemy never close enough for me to see a face, or discern a form. At least, not as my enemy. Only as our prisoners. Our Captain, Arnaud is his name, likes to dress our ship in pyrates, a scarf of gore to be seen through any length of spyglass that proves no quarter would be given, no mercies spared. He would take a pyrate or two, ones not left on their own ship before we scuttled her, and drag them to his quarters. He would cut them from ear to ear with his knife, deeply, tie a rope around their throat to settle in the gash and hang them sternside. He did not ever haul them back up. He would sail until the rope sawed at the dead muscles of their necks and thinned their spine, until their bloated weight became too much and that which they were hanged by finally snaps, casting them in two parts into the ocean. When I first watched Arnaud do this work, I was repulsed. I am not a weak man, I have known violence, I have known savagery, I have known the need to ward away evil with your own. I had not known this. Now, three weeks since boarding, I find no repulsion. I am now often tasked with measuring Arnaud’s lengths of rope. At night, the night of our last skirmish, I find Peter at twilight, not asleep in his heap of blankets but deckside, at the stern, staring down at the handful of pyrates hanging by their cut throats. I ask if he is well. He tells me he was thinking about Gravesham, back in England, where his Father was from. He said he could not remember the name of their King. He asks me if there is any chance we’d be back on land soon, back to Jamestown, back home, back to robbing. He looks through me with milky eyes as he asks. I tell him I am sure we will be, one day soon to come. I decide to leave him be, staring down at the once-men leaking fat and pus and dark blood into the ocean, trying to recall the name of the King.

But now your month is up, old Turk,

And we say so, and we know so,

Get up, you swine, and look for work,

Oh poor old man.

I couldn’t find sleep one night in my fourth week, and wandered up to deck. Some men sat whispering, sharing a bottle, crumbling tack into their damp mouths. Some were sleeping here, naked and still in the night’s breeze. I climb her rigging upward, higher than I’d ever stood before, higher than I knew a thing could be built. The sky is a deep, dark blue, a grim navy, the colour of the shadow cast by a mountain over a swamp. Piercing through it are stars uncountable, smoky light of violet and green smeared all through them, with a moon so bright I thought perhaps I had died and was staring at the greatest, final mercy for all men. I climb higher, until I come to the crow’s nest, where Old Dromand with his seven fingers and hairless head is usually to be found, a seeker of land, a diviner of gulls. Tonight, though, he is not. I look out at the world and find only water and night, ink all the way to the horizon. I think about home. About all our years sticking up carriages and wagons for not nearly enough, purses we knew would only buy us our next night. I think about the Englishman we killed. Some Lieutenant, or Captain, or some such standing of soldier or governor. The last thing I ever did in the land I was born in was take a life out of it. I run my scabbing palms over the wood of the mast, smoothed to a shine like a pearl from a hundred arms that have hugged it, I’m sure. My wounds do not open so easily anymore. The salt does not sting my eyes so terribly. The rocking of the sea does not turn my insides. I almost feel my bones becoming buoyant. I almost feel my toes and fingers melting into thick flippers. I feel the first small stirrings of my soul becoming one that will come to know only the ocean. No more roads. No more forest lean-tos and quiet fires between me and Peter as I keep watch for us both on restless nights. No more cobblestone and no more trees. I look out to that distant point where the midnight sky of a thousand lights and ribbon after ribbon of coloured smoke touches the still black water broken only by rogue waves and sandbars barely the length of ten men. I look to that point and hug the mast, and know I will never feel those roads beneath my feet again, know I will never ride a horse with the wind wrapping my smiling face ever again.

Oh, he’s dead as a nail in the lamp room floor,

And we say so, and we know so,

And he won’t be botherin’ us no more,

Oh, poor old man.

I am holding Peter’s cold hand. His does not hold mine. His is too weak to return the comfort. I was shaken awake some time before first light by Parridge, one of our carpenters, who said not a word to me, just pointed at my friend who had been lifted into the hammock above his lump of sheets. A few of the other men were awake, and stood fiddling with their knives or picking at the wood or their skin or their scalps, all looking anywhere but at that low, rough hammock. Peter is shivering slightly, all over, looking through the ceiling and into the sky he cannot see. He has not acknowledged my being here, not yet. With my other hand I run my palm over his damp forehead and pat his thin cheek. A bony cheek. A pale cheek. In Virginia, he was the son of our Butcher. He used to be a round, fat little boy. He used to have rosy cheeks, cheeks so red he would suffer school with a cold as nobody believed he could be ill, with cheeks like his. He lost his timber by the time he was sixteen, when we began stalking the roads and embarking on our shared something-of-a-career. When we rode together and slept on either side of the meagre fires we made at the treelines of woods. When he showed me how to shoot a rifle and load it quick. As if in his fading he could read my mind and stirred at my memories, he squeezes my hand, gently. His wet, yellowing eyes look into mine. He opens his mouth slowly and with an exertion that sets in before the task is done, like a child carrying grain uphill. Like a fat, rosy-cheeked child hauling a sack of guns to the harbour. Low, he speaks. “There’s a horse out there, Toby. Look. You haven’t been seeing it? Toby? Can’t you see that horse?” I nod, tell him I can, and then I hold his cheek and his hand as he goes and leaves me alone.

We’ll use the hairs of his tails to sew our sails,

And we say so, and we know so,

And the iron of his shoes to make deck nails,

Oh, poor old man.

I cannot say I expected much in the way of ceremony, or condolences, nor do I want them. These men did not know Peter, I do not think he had the strength or thought to speak a word to them beyond his first few days here. Yet, there was something of a goodbye in store, and it came quickly. The logistics of being rid of sick, dead meat fast in so confined a space, I suppose. After Peter had been wrapped in some motheaten cloth, a pair of gunners with arms like their cannons came to take him up to the deck, for his some-kind-of-farewell and his deposit into the world’s greatest grave. I ask them to let me do it. They oblige, and move so I can get to him. I carry him across my forearms and against my chest like I’m carrying him over the bridal threshold. He is so very, very light. I think that for all the years I have known him, I have never carried him before. I take him to the portside bulwark, where a cannon has been moved to make something of a door for him, a somewhat kinder entryway. I lay him down, Arnaud watching beside me, smoking a long pipe of tobacco that smells like mud. I can not find many words. I pat his wrapped chest and say, “I have known him since I was six years old. I have known my great friend.” If I am to say anything at all, all I will say will be the truth. Arnaud blows a trail of dirt-scented smoke from out of his cracked lips. He says aloud, to the men hovering near the sight to varying degrees of interest, “This one was one of mine. However brief. This one was one of ours.” He turns to his Quartermaster, whose name I realise I do not know. He asks him if he died in the evening past or the morning present, and chuckles when he hears that it was in the morning. He slaps my back, hard. “And he gave us our month. The last thing he had to give, he gave it good.” The men around us jeer, holler, stomp their feet, some whistle. Arnaud leans down and sends Peter to the ocean. I thought he would float.

We’ll hoist him up to the fore yardarm, 

And we say so, and we know so,

Where he won’t do sailors any more harm,

Oh, poor old man.

Arnaud gestures to me with his pipe, something near a smile on him, turning to return to his cabin. “And you’ve given it too, you pink, Anglais wretch.” Another wave of noise, of cheers, of regard. The Quartermaster tosses me a lime, tells me now I can surely go find some work to do. I thank him and decide that aye, I can go find some work to do. The sun is a bastard on us today, the wind its accomplice, all still and thick. The men around me start to hum, those on the deck, those on the mast, those hanging from the rigging like squirrels as they mend tears and frayings. They sing often in the heat and work of our days, while so far I only listen and hope to learn the words, but I have not heard this one. A man beside me slaps my arm, tells me it’s a song for me and all the foolishness in my life that cursed me with a place on this ship. A song, he says, that is saved for those who pay a ship her month, when their debt is settled in blood and abstention. I have gotten good enough with the ropes of our sails that I can now knot and manipulate them without looking intently at my work, and so I listen to their song, and gaze into the scorched, honeyed horizon. My friend asks me if I’m seeing sirens with big breasts and amphoras of wine inviting me down for a swim yet. I spit overboard, smile at him, still enjoying the tune of my first month’s wage. I see the first old dear me and Peter stuck up when we barely had whiskers, brandishing twigs under our coats and telling her we had two pistols each and very hungry pockets after we snatched her spectacles from her. I see the coin I kept from that woman’s purse, which lived in my boot for a week until it was used to buy Peter his first ale, which he thought tasted like bile. I see the waterfront of Elizabeth City, where one night we sat and tossed pebbles and slept drunk one night after a fortnight of taking only pittances and pennies, where Peter told me how much he hated the sea. The horizon is a painting of every shade of amber and the sun seems to be cooling ever so slightly. I listen to their song, their song for me. I stare into the horizon. Stare into it, stare through it, stare over the curve of the faraway blue, then past that. Then, I see it.

We’ll drop him down with the long, long roll,

And we say so, and we know so.

I see a horse. I see a great, golden horse with a mane of stars and clouds pouring from its eyes galloping hard through the ocean, as if it were only a roadside puddle.

Where the sharks shall have his body,

And the Devil takes his soul,

Oh, poor old man.