The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  By the graves sit the community of dirt-eaters, now fifteen or twenty in number. They will not take sustenance. They sit or lie upon the ground, arms too thin for human limb, faces too drawn for flesh, smeared white with powder. In their eyes, there is already retreat; they are already in the land of the dead.

  Dr. Trefusis informed me that Will was among them.

  For three days he hath resided there. Will hath sustained many sorrows, as have we all; and he receiving word of the capture of so many of our Company, he could no longer support such harrowing news, and repaired to the grave-grove, there to die. I cannot with ease think upon him and his friend John, newly fled, telling the tale of their turkey call.

  When we made our dinner, I went to deliver some of the corn mash to him.

  I found him among the red pines. He sat apart from the rest of the cult of suicides, his legs crooked impossibly. There was spittle upon his chin; and he stared at me without recognition.

  I presented the mash; which he did not take; nor, in his sickness, did he remonstrate when I held the mash before his face.

  I presented it between his lips; but the tongue did not move, and the jaw was without motion. The mash lay in his mouth, or dripped forth, cutting a channel in the soil of his chin.

  I reached up and closed his mouth. At this, he could not breathe, and shook his head as might a sleeper. He spat forth the mash, and resumed his empty look.

  Determined that he should stir from this deathly posture, this fatal repose, I filled the spoon again, and held it before him as a command.

  Once more, he did not eat.

  He asked merely, “Why?”

  Said I, “Why?”

  He nodded, and repeated, “Why.”

  I held forth the spoon, and answered, “Because Slant of our Company is dead; and Jocko of our Company is dead; and Pomp of our Company is gone. And John of our Company is sold.”

  “John, aye, sold,” he said.

  “And they did not fall so that you may sit.”

  “Aye,” he said. “Aye, John.”

  For a time, we sat together. After a time, he nodded slowly. He took a finger’s pinch of the mash, and ate it. He closed his eyes.

  “Octavian?” he said.

  “Yes?” said I.

  “Octavian,” he repeated.

  At supper-time, I brought him home.

  In the evening, I write our tale of this last week. We spake it during supper, as once, at the inception of our Regiment, all told the tales of escape; now we tell the tales of the return of soldiers to bondage. We tell of how our companions fell, and how we are become murderers.

  July 5th, 1776

  “Ignis pepercit, unda mergit, æris

  Vis pestilentis, æquori ereuptum necat,

  Bello superstes, tabidus morbo perit.”6

  6 “Those whom fire has spared are drowned by water; the man rescued from the water is saved only by air tainted with pestilence; and the survivor of war is ruined by wasting sickness.”— George Buchanan, Baptista [Editor’s note]

  July 6th, 1776

  “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. But they were all gone aside, they were all together become filthy: there were none that doeth good, no, not one.”— Psalm XIV

  In the night, Dr. Trefusis came to me by the fire, his frame involved in the most violent agitations.

  “Pray, sir,” said I. “What ails you?”

  He could not still his trembling. Said he, “I stepped backward into our tent.” He sat upon the ground next to me, and demanded, “Know you my assertion that there is no matter, that all is a void, could we but perceive it?”

  I said that I did.

  “Aye,” said he. “Aye.” I waited, and at long last he continued: “But ten minutes since, I stepped backward into our tent,” he said, his eyes closed, “and I fell. Then all resumed, and I was standing upon solid ground. But for a moment, Octavian, for a moment, there was nothing in the world. Nothing at all.”

  July 7th, 1776

  When Cretan Cadmus fought the dragon sacred to Mars and brought it down, armed with but his lance and his buckler of lion-skin, he sowed its teeth in the ground at the bidding of Pallas Athena. Then rose from the ground savage soldiers, the children of war, and began without aim or plan or mercy to slaughter each other, their eyes no sooner opened than they set to kill all who they first viewed, all that they might kill before being slain themselves, hacking at those who still crawled from the integument of the earth to slay them before they walked; knowing nothing of the world but blood, bone, and fury; which spectacle Cadmus and Athena observed in helpless dread, seeking to intervene, only to be reprimanded by one tall, gory, muscled child, saying that they must stay back, for they did not understand the rules of massacre; which said, he was felled by a javelin, and the thrower felled by a sword, and the swordsman by a bolt; and thus the battle royal continued.

  In a short time, in all that field of butchery, there were but five left, and these, red with blood, looked about them at the bodies of their fallen brethren, born but seconds before and already dismembered and inert; and seeing this, they paused. One took off his helmet and threw it to the ground, and dropped his weapons; and so the others, too, weeping. They spake together, and they made a solemn pact that they should not annihilate each other in phrenzy of self-interest, but live in that place in amity; and thus was founded the city of Thebes.

  We might be thus.

  And yet: When Jason of the Argo, seeking the Golden Fleece, sowed the same dragon’s teeth in the plains beneath the mountains of Ethiopia, there, too, warriors budded and rose up in the furrows, crested, helmeted, armed with sword and javelin.

  No sooner had they shaken off the dew of birth, than they were murderous, and turned on each other and on Jason himself, slaughtering without reason or mercy.

  There was, in the end, none left standing. Their rapacity for mastery had been so great that all were brought to destruction equally.

  And we might be thus.

  Dr. Trefusis was no longer my teacher; there was nothing left to learn. But still, of an evening, we sat there in a field of fires, looking across the channel at the rebels’ hill of fires, and we spake as we could of the day just past.

  On this night, as we sat in company, we discoursed on many things; and I told Dr. Trefusis that some weeks before, I had finished with Apollonius’s Voyage of the Argo, upon which I had a query.

  My preceptor indicated that it would delight him to offer assistance upon any point wherein his small powers might prove of use — declensions, verb irregularities.

  I said, “I have a question regarding the dragon’s teeth.” I told of the war-like births witnessed by Jason and by Cadmus, the one crop of souls arriving at truce, the other so involved in its savagery that none was left alive.

  “Which,” said I, “are we?”

  “As a species,” said Dr. Trefusis, “I believe we hunt in packs and show our bellies. We are territorial as the beasts of the savanna. We mate for seven years, in which time our young grow to full mobility; and that accomplished, we turn to fornication as a means of further propagating our seed. Oh, we are a delightful guest. That is all, say I.”

  “Pleased you delivered my wedding sermon,” mumbled Bono. “Can double at my God-damned funeral.”

  “There must,” said I, “be some place one could go and begin again. This time, untainted.”

  “The taint,” said Dr. Trefusis, “is not a stain upon us, but is, I believe, our primary operation. It is not simply a mark upon our skin.”

  “As the mark of Cain?” said I.

  “Cain, yes. The first slaughter,” said he.

  “Which accursed and darkened my race, say your theologians.”

  “They do not belong to me,” said Dr. Trefusis. “I simply use them and return them baggy.”

  “I wish to know if we might begin again somewhere,” I said.

  “Throw down y
our spears and such,” said Bono. “Break your swords. How long you think before someone swoops into your paradise and makes short work of you? No defenses.”

  Quoth Dr. Trefusis, “‘Only the dead hath seen the end of war.’”

  “We must persist,” said I.

  We did not speak after that, save Bono, who said, touching his wife upon the neck, “There must be joy.”

  So we were agreed; but late at night, lying in our tent, I heard Bono, outside, wrapped in a blanket, whisper his seductions to Nsia. His douceurs were nought but such as an artillery marshal might declaim.

  “Attention!” (murmured) “Tend the vent! . . . Lower the breech! . . . Advance the worm!” I heard her laugh through the canvas; to each command, she whispered, “Yes, sir.”

  “Swab the piece,” he continued.

  “Yes, sir.”

  We heard the fumbling in the grass. Will we or nil we, we could do no other than hear. “Handle the charge!” said he. “Ram down the charge! . . . Take aim! . . . Prime! . . . Make ready! . . . Give! Fire!”

  The engagement was not long. Mayhap he turned his sword to ploughshare; but perhaps, too, all was combat now.

  July 8th, 1776

  7

  7 “Be like the rock against which the waves batter; stand firm and unmoved until the ocean’s violence ceases.”— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations [Editor’s note]

  The air being thick and oppressive, and all of us tormented with the itch and by abundant fleas which had invaded our quarters, sleep was a stranger to me the night of the 8th. No sooner did welcome rest steal away my waking sense, and I begin dreaming, but a bite would rouse me; and so I lay staring into darkness, breathing the rank, unhealthy vapors of the night, hemmed on one side by Dr. Trefusis, and on the other by Will.

  Come the dawn, Dr. Trefusis spake to me, for neither would sleep come to him. We ceased even the pretense of slumber, and he whispered, “The morning star ariseth.”

  With some bitterness, I replied, “The evening star is barely abed.”

  “The evening star is also the morning star,” Dr. Trefusis informed me. “’Twas Parmenides first noted it. They are both Venus.”

  I mumbled an assent and complained of my bites; and he avowed his worse; and both of us went so far as to express dissatisfaction at the chorus of the birds, which, with the dawn, had swelled to a great noise.

  So were we engaged when the attack began.

  With the first blast of the great cannon, all were awake. We heard shouting throughout the camp, and scrambled from the ground and beat at the flap of our tent that we might see what had transpired.

  At this came the second blast, louder even than the first, a brisk, sharp blow that rebounded across the whole architecture of the sky, as if the earth itself convulsed.

  I had now scrambled outside the tent — and could see others running through the lanes between companies, screaming and making signs of utmost alarm in the gloaming.

  From the detonation, ’twas a larger gun than ever the rebels had displayed to us previous; and it had shot two cannonballs through the stern of the Dunmore, which tore through the whole length of the ship, shattering window, post, and hull.

  Now began the rebels a bombardment of our camp, that eventuality always feared, and through the half-black of night we saw the cannonballs leaping through the tents, tearing them asunder, saw the dark bodies struggling beneath them.

  Repeatedly now, we perceived the flares of artillery on the mainland, and the haze of motion in the air — heard the eruptions upon the ships as shot and shell battered them, heard the cries of those waking to disaster.

  We knew not what to do; a panic seemed general, and no officer appeared to offer guidance; and still the bombardment fell upon the camp. Now replied our guns from Fort Hamond, and among the ships — I could not see from which — there was steady fire.

  We heard the cry of orders, but could not determine who made these demands. Men scurried past us without so much as their muskets, leaping into the ditch we had dug across the promontory, and confusion everywhere reigned supreme.

  There was, abruptly, a halt to the fire as both sides prepared their batteries.

  “Sweet mercy,” said Bono, his arm around his wife.

  “They shall land soon,” said I. “They shall cross the channel.”

  “I could wish,” said Dr. Trefusis, his hands behind his back, peering down at the fire, scraping at it with his toe, “I could wish that the embers were yet hot enough to boil tea. After a night such as that, there could —”

  The grapeshot which killed him took off most of his skull. He spun and his body was thrown forward, so that he lay beside the ashes of our fire.

  Nsia’s breath was labored; I feared she suffered from some asphyxiation, and went to tend to her; all her attention being fixed on the object behind me. Bono too, as I struggled with his wife’s hands to remove them from her mouth, paid me no heed, and did not aid me with my intervention, but rather regarded what lay there with looks bespeaking the greatest agitation; and though I sought to remove Nsia’s hands from her mouth, I found they were already at her sides, and she paddled at me, calling my name and resisting the annoyance of my ministrations.

  He lay beside the fire and little of his face remained. His hand was in the embers, and smoked.

  As I recall it, Bono and I spake for some time, though I cannot recall of what we spake. The light rose. As flight was now general — the breastworks of Fort Hamond being blasted to pieces before us — I did attempt to raise up the body and carry it with me.

  He weighed nothing, my tutor, my preceptor; he weighed nothing, and I had carried him across the waters. We fled to Boston once, through the Bay, and all had lain before us, novel and unknown.

  I stood with him half-hefted, my arm around his waist.

  Then another volley of detonations rang out. With the rising light, I now could see the floating town off the northern shore of the island; the shot fell upon the fleet from the sky, ripping through deck and hull, while warships struggled to come about and return the fire, and tenders towed great ships still crippled without sail, without wind, at low tide.

  “Take him,” said Pro Bono. “We got — Take him — We —” and neither he nor I could speak, but we ran. The corpse weighed upon my shoulder — light as thrushdown, thought I — light as thought — and yet as I ran from the bombardment he slewed to the side, as if seeking to touch the earth, and Bono lifted him once more so he hung fully upon me.

  As the cannonballs fell, before us, over the grass, over uneven beds of moss and stumps where we had sawed down forests to build defenses, fled the King’s soldiers and our camp followers: Loyalists in green velvet, children half-dressed, a Negro woman in a stained crewel petticoat, once of the finest, blotched with mud, and soldiers clutching their coats.

  They were all shouting there — at the northern tip of the island, where we were mobbed — shouting for transports — the crush was unimaginable. The wavelets broke across our feet, and he was in the mud at my side.

  Bono insisted that I must leave him; officers now strode among us, calling out for us to form.

  I wished to cry, and made some attempts; but found it impossible.

  I hunched upon the mud and observed that the transports did not appear like to come for us, the water erupting so frequently with the plumes of detonation. I could not quiet my chest; the pitch of my heart was forward and steep; the arms quivered in fits.

  Leave the body, Private, said a lieutenant I did not know. Come with us. Leave it. He ain’t going to dance away.

  “I will put him by a tree.”

  Yes, be quick.

  “Sir, I will lay him against a tree, where the sun will not fall on him.”

  Famous.

  “In the shade,” said I. “It is no disrespect, to lay him —”

  Soldier! Attend!

  “He needs burial.”

  Set him down there and form.

  Bono lifted the feet; the body was dri
pping with sand.

  My breath did not come easily.

  Some time later, I was sensible that we marched in columns. We were arrived at the isle’s eastern shore; we unloaded cartloads from the stores. I no longer supported Dr. Trefusis.

  I said to Bono, “It is noon.”

  He replied, “You left him. He’s against a tree.”

  The rebel guns had ceased.

  They were preparing some new onslaught. I wondered, through my confusion, when we should be removed from the island.

  That day, Major Byrd commanded all of us, though he was red with the smallpox; he delivered his orders from a cart pulled by men of our Regiment. His face was scarred with the pox, but he was stern of gesture. We saw him roll past.

  I was ordered to stand near the breastworks overlooking the inlet between island and mainland. The rebels were plain to me. The other soldier stationed in the picket, a man unknown to me, asked me when I thought they would put in with their boats and cross over to us for an assault. I could little understand why he believed I should have this intelligence; I shivered throughout the whole of my body.

  I wished to see Bono, that we might conduct the burial.

  I do not know how I passed the hours, for my mind was in so great a tumult, it scarcely operated.

  I wished still to cry, and attempted it again; and once again, my effort failed, all tears occluded.

  The afternoon was green; this do I recall; the haze in the atmosphere pregnant with the tinct of leaf and grass, so the water, the sky, all appeared submerged. Looking toward the sick camp, I saw the sufferers gathered outside the huts we had built for them, waving their hands in fear.

  I watched them for some while; and then was called away.

  In the night, we returned to the encampment on the northwest point. We hauled cannons for an artillery company. This occupied some hours. I was no longer fearful. We rolled tents and retrieved as much as we might.