Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 Read Online Free Page A

to pace the verandah.
                 Presently a brig schooner drifted
into view, angling in towards the shore. At that distance I couldn't quite read
the words painted on the side, but a flag hung over the stem from the ensign
staff with a design stitched on it which was either a semitone sign or else the
outline of a mandolin. I ran indoors and clanged my bell.
                 Donnah had decreed that I should be
escorted through the streets to the docks with all due dignity; namely, perched
shoulder-high in a padded chair strapped to poles. So much did my litter rock
and bob and undulate upon that journey that for a while I, who had never been
water-sick but once—aboard the Sally
Argent, and then not because of waves—feared that I might turn up at the
quayside green and puking. However, I gritted my teeth and even managed to grin
and wave my free hand to passers-by who stopped to applaud and blow kisses and fall in behind us; with my other hand I had
to clutch the chair-arm.
                 Still, at least by this method we proceeded
apace. Once we were within sight of the quay, with the Merry Mandolin yet to heave its mooring ropes ashore, I cried,
"Set me down! I'll walk from here!" And so I did, with my guards
cordoning me from the wake of townsfolk.
                 When Tam appeared at the head of the
gangplank—a huge bag in each hand—he just stood there for upward of a minute
blocking the way. I was waiting at the bottom, with Donnah and her gang.
Behind, a fair throng of spectators loomed. Yet Tam didn't seem to notice any
of us. He was only seeing—well, he told me this subsequently when we were
walking back to the temple together; with his bags riding in my chair rather
than me, to Donnah's chagrin—he was only seeing that gangplank which led from
water on to land. He was seeing the fact that whilst he stayed aboard the Merry Mandolin, he could still sail
anywhere—even all the way back home to Aladalia. But once he crossed that
bridge, he would be marooned ashore. Tam was sure he had left something in his
cabin; and indeed he had. It wasn't anything tangible, though. What he had left
was the way back home. That was why he hesitated for so long.
                 He descended. We shook
hands—quaintly, his big lumpy hand making mine disappear. I argued with Donnah
a bit. The guards hoisted his bags; we set off.
                 I soon heard his confession.
"But it's so wonderful to be here with you!" he insisted. He was
stooping over me from what now seemed to me a hugely gangly height. "That you should have asked for me out of everyone—well,
well!" His voice sank softly so that only I should hear. "I
have the fleuradieu you sent me, pressed and dried in my luggage—and I have a
surprise as well. A present. I never thought I'd
actually deliver it. I hoped you might come across its like in some far town one day, and realize that it was for you."
                 "That sounds delightfully
mysterious."
                 "The mystery is you, Yaleen."
                 He seemed genuinely happy when he
said these things. I decided that this was because he had at last found a way
of fulfilling his impossible love for me. He could be near me, adoring me to
his heart's content and even touching me, as a big brother a sister; our
relationship had suddenly been blessed with innocence. Now he was exempt from
any ordinary expectations a lover might have had of him, where he might have
fallen short. Equally, no one else could ever win me from him, since I was
physically unwinnable. No need for jealousy. He was cured, redeemed, his aching
ecstatic heart's wound salved.
                 Or so I told myself while he escorted
me, nudging my guards into the background merely by the way he walked. At first
I had felt qualms about that business at the gangplank, as he explained it; yet
now I congratulated myself somewhat.