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Conning poor folk of great innocence like yourself into reading my things.
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Requiem aeternam dona eis,
Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis,
Requiescant in pace.
Amen.
- - -
Eternal rest grant unto them,
O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.
Amen.
-Prayer of Eternal Rest
I don’t tell you these things with a light heart, full of relief or past my sorrow, but I lament, and grieve for the deeds that I acted out, whether within or without the clergy, as I have found myself unable to allow such… No word fits here, but sinned, but yet, not quite even that fits. I am unable to watch the wicked go unpunished, not like I was. Do you think I am the only one who thought the crew to be against god? The captain did, not that the word of the devil meant much to me at the time.
The ship, the Inficio, was not meant for passengers. I don’t know if it was the fetid interior of the ship, or maybe the rats that were abundant, but the way the crew treated outsiders was what caught me… they didn’t shove me aside, or any such thing, but they took me and showed me what they did to fill their…free time, I suggest as a word here. Here and there you’d catch it, not in person, like walking in, but you’d feel it in the people around you, the stink of it, the crushed pieces of their souls, screaming for help. Or something.
I hadn’t boarded to join the crew, but found myself despairing at the sight of the city around me; the sideways glances I received, though deserved, I shied away from them and found myself unable to tolerate the life that shunned me, pushing me deeper into a hermits’ life, shopping and obtaining food and work in the night, away from the people, sleeping when no one would turn their eyes on me.
The port town of Vita would no longer hold me, not the way it had before. So I had bartered away everything I owned, and chased my old life away by boarding the Inficio, a ship whose crew were less than suspicious.
What business had a cursed man to spit on the damned, anyways?
My first night on the ship was hardly something I would find myself able to lament forgetting. The rocking, the incessant clockwork of back and forth reminded me, regrettably of my long life in mass, on my knees, begging for forgiveness, the regularity, the foolish way I fell to my knees, daily, waiting for gratification. With no end, I felt… alone.
Much as I felt then, there on the ship, quietly wondering where on this ship I would find a use to pay for that little bit of currency I hadn’t covered in my original expenses of boarding, the lump sum, more than a clergy man could have afforded, not with his constant release of all worldly possession to god. Thankfully, I had trinkets and small things to sell off for a few pounds.
Presently, I found myself watching the mal-fitted door rattle in it’s misshapen frame, thanks to either a fool carpenter or a long life at sea, I assumed the latter, prefer the latter, but am not sure. The ship hand had led me here, to the back of the ship, the close bottom, leaving me here to “yer own devices, surr,” he’d said, and he knew not how right he’d been.
Do you fathom yourself able to grasp what it is to wake everyday and beg to be released, to crave the way a dog does, for scraps form your lord, begging for some sort of way to end all pain? It’s far from any pain, it’s greater. It becomes a habit, step out of bed, and fall to your knees. After several years out of the church, I was only a few short years from needing a cane to rise again.
Finished with more or less observing the rats that passed, squeezing under the door to greet me and making off, I found myself craving something to eat, maybe something to do, something to fill the boredom. Rising off the straw bed, I pushed the door open and shooed a rat or two away from my ankles and found myself facing the captain.
“Found yer sea legs already, I see,” he spoke quietly, with the practiced tongue of a gentleman, though, given his many-scarred fingers, I have to suppose that it’s a subtle shift, for him, from diplomacy to treachery.
“My… what?” I asked, politely, trying not to watch his scarred fingers work the cane too much.
“Sea legs,” he said, as though I should know. “The rocking,” he indicated, with a wave of the chipped and worn wooden cane. I have to wonder if it isn’t for a bad knee, or for semblance of sophistication. Perhaps both.
“Oh… Not quite, I just walk on every other one, and push on at those moments,” I admitted, feeling the color rise in my face, my surprise at his appearance abating, but my embarrassment taking it’s place.
“Well, I suppose that’ll get the gist of it, till we start really sailing, huh?” he asked, rhetorically, I hoped.
I answered anyhow. “I guess so,” I agreed, maneuvering around him, seeking some sort of company I could read the body language of, if not only a little.
“Preacher-man,” He called over his shoulder, a call that made me stop.
“I’m not a priest anymore.” I corrected, curt… The image of the broken beggar flashing in my mind. A passing discomfort.
“Be that as it may, I’d like to call you that, just the same,” he said, making his way, half-limping, half-strutting down the hall. I cursed under my breath and my fingers traced the edges of my shirt, where, years before had hung the heavy crucifix of clergy. No more.
I didn’t’ end up seeking any company after that. I mopped the decks, and cleaned the wares of the kitchen and dinning rooms, carefully, meticulously, treating them as I had the altar as a boy. The captains words jarred me, I admit, quite like a splinter form a well-polished piece of furniture, throwing me off entirely.
I kept to myself for days, surfacing to eat and rinse my body in the sea, confining myself to the small quarters I’d been given, though I was no passenger, nor was I a crewman.
That is, until we found the Victus. Our ship was not a ship that didn’t bear with it a modern way about it. The cannon were hidden from the outside, by a clever carpenter, most likely not the one who had fashioned my door, but another. The sliding plates of wood concealed our weapons and intentions well.
It was maybe a week out, on a voyage to a place I couldn’t recall, our destination was a mystery to me. A clever hand climbed down from where it had been perched, seeking a sight of land, or ship, or whatever it was he was there for maintaining the watch for. The end result was Victus, the ship we found. Poor, poor Victus. That day, I’d found sleep, although lightly. A loud booming roused me with an offhand efficiency.
The captain came to me, and slapped the misshapen door with his cane, I’d imagine, since I couldn’t see it accompanying his feet from the gap between floor and door.
“Preacher-man!” he called. I rose, wiping away the grim in my eyes and I pulled the door open. It opened inward, oddly, it seemed to make the room smaller when it was open.
“Captain?” I breathed, yawning slightly, still only half able to walk the ships length without stumbling.
“We’ve boarded another vessel, and found many dead. I’d like for you to read their last rites to them, if ye’d be so kind.” The captain smiled, the smile that I recognized. It meant Do it, because otherwise you’re going to need rites of your own.
Don’t mistake me, the captain was not a violent man, but he didn’t seem to have an abundance of patience, in the ways of his crew. I had yet to see him humble himself by dining with the rest of us.
I surfaced from the underbelly of the ship, like a rat and had to shield my eyes from the sun. It was bright, mid afternoon, I believe and could see the many lines linking our ship and the other one, whose deck sported something we surely did not have. It sported a pile of clothes, lying there, haphazardly tossed together.
Moving closer, I crossed the wobbling plank of wood that connected our two decks, and sought the coffins. But not for long. I stopped and swayed there on the plank, eyeing the pile of what had seemed to me to be a cascade of clothes on the deck, it was indeed clothes. With men inside. Dead men.
They had been hacked apart, torn asunder. Blood was streaming from the pile, a fecal smell permeated the air and I raised my salty sleeve to my mouth for a few moments, before crossing and standing there at the small cove of the decks coming together, a doorway leading down, waiting for the captain.
Time dragged by as I watched, rats rose from the bowels of the ship, and scurried over to bite, and chew, only watched by the crew, who I now noted were keeping to the Inficio, not daring to cross to this ship, the damned one.
I waited, my retching here and there, sighing until the captain made his way, irritably slow, standing there before me, he waited there on the Inficio, his ship as I read them the prayer of eternal rest, as I remembered. A priest of the past had no need to carry a bible in his belongings, did he?
I made my way, slowly to the Inficio, and collapsed there, against the rails of the deck, watching as our ship cast off, away from the ship we had set aflame. Unable to bury any of them, we had decided to burn it, and shove off, making way for a sea area upwind of the massacre.
As we did, I leaned there, retching a little still, I saw the words painted over the ships old name, a red solution that could be nothing other than blood, by whoever could have slaughtered the men on that boat. “Victus” was scrawled there, over whatever had been the ships name, I don’t recall, but the name stuck.
Victus, or ‘The Conquered’ was appropriate, in a way.
That night, we drank, and drank, whether it was to inebriate ourselves or to drown our conscience, I’ll never know. The only thing I remember from that night was the sound I’d heard in my soft dreams before the captain had called me, I remembered the image of him walking away. The loud booming sound that had roused me. He had been without a cane when he’d left me.
The headaches left me and the sickness passed, and my resolve to be alone in my place was filling me, more than any I had ever known. I found myself sliding to my knees, ready to pray, but changing my mind, half heartedly slamming my fist into the damp wood between my knees, I would rise and set about my tasks, cleaning and laboring at the wares and dishes.
Recovering form the nights before, we found no ships, whether by gods’ grace or our own, none crossed our path, though our stores had been raised by the Victus, our own stores were still not up to par. Victus had, mind you, been a much smaller ship, so their stores didn’t quite cover what we’d used up in our tarrying across the sea. It struck me only when I noted that our provisions, while they had started out grand by my standards, had dwindled dramatically.
The ships’ cook was becoming apprehensive of our situation and the crew was only subconsciously aware that everyday there was a spoonful or two less in their bowls, a bite less, there for them. The captain, of course would stand there, callous fingers gripping the wooden wheel that turned us in his fancied direction, pushing us a nother way, unaffected by the changes in our supply, or our morale, impervious to all plea and bargain of where we were headed.
Our destination seemed lacking. None of us had ever been this way, least of all me, and I found this news unnerving. Not by much, as the crews’ talk did little to settle me when I was feeling well enough to converse with them. It’s odd how a way of life can so alienate others. One damned soul to another, they’d say, offering drinks.
Wisely, I’d sworn off alcohol, as my only encounter with such vile chemical had gone awry, and shown me it’s backside, leaving me reeling all the following morning. The chemical seemed to me to have worn off, but there, in my own mussed bedding, I could feel the headache, as, I’d imagine, one would experience a knife in their side. Rats scurried to and from my bedside freely; I’d forgotten to secure the mal-shaped door and force it shut, though it seemed it was loathe to fit so. The rats bothered me, but not as they had since I had joined Inficio weeks ago. It seems that constant company with the creatures had dulled me to their presence. Maybe.
Before me, the rat lifted itself on it’s hind legs, to gaze at me freely, whiskers twitching in the air, his tiny nose wrinkling in a way. I looked at him and shook my hair out of my eyes, sitting up, but he did not shy away from me, the face unwavering as I watched him, he seemed unwilling to respond, even as I slammed my feet down on the wooden boards beneath the both of us.
“Will you not flee?” I asked it softly. I don’t know whether my lips moved or not, but he responded, in moving down, off his haunches and down to all fours, twitching his nose at me. I wondered whether or not he’d think to bit, and waited, quietly awaiting his move.
“Flee from me,” I grumbled, shaking from me the need to observe him any longer. If he would bite me, then so be it, I was in no mood for challenging fates and casting dice with any sort of demons. This rat had no means to kill me, upon biting, I would inflict death on it. Surely, no bite could kill me, a man!
When he finally did attack, his teeth came, gnawing an then there were claws, all over the ankle he assailed, his flesh falling on mine, there was no grace in it, no beauty, simply a squeal and an attack, where claws and teeth tore.
Kicking out, I flung him wide, and realized too late that I had no true weapon to defend myself. Surely, I couldn’t simply run away, and ask a crewmate to help me slay a rat? No, surely a band of marauders and murderers would shake their heads in disbelief.
I brought up a hand and with it a few fingers of vengeance for my massacred ankle, which was bleeding profusely, the blood had begun to slicken the floor around us, as I brought my fist down on the rat, and planted my fist in it’s back, only to receive more scratches, this time less, I had his head pinned under my fists’ power, and his claws were only vaguely able to reach my wrist and arms. I had only moments to think of a way to finish it, when he turned over, biting hard on my fingers.
I screamed and one of my knees came down, and I pinned it there, the crushing weight of me on it’s belly and lower legs, and I threw down my other fist, into the side of it’s head
Hours later, the headache hadn’t left me, but the corpse of the rat had been nibbled on by it’s own bretheren, and many of them had carried away whole pieces. I did nothing for my own wounds, but protect them from the others, snatching at them when they approached, taking swipes and lashing out half-heartedly taking swings when they were too close. It usually sent them into a frenzy, ravaging the easy meal.
That stuck with me. An easy meal. Where was the god I’d bowed and scraped to for so long, the one who told us that we were to do unto others as we would have done to us? Where? Was he only applied to humans? If so, were we the rats who ravaged the fallen Victus? Maybe we were the fallen preacher, the damned one who stamped out it’s life.
My heart changed that day, there trapped by my own past in the bottom of this place. Here, among murderers, I saw my own salvation. It wasn’t in killing the captain and trying to show the crew his error. These men were the kind that were all alike. They were rats, who would chew up their own kind and destroy. No, that simply would not do.
Among the rats, there is no hero, no defender of the weak. The only kinship among rats is the need to seek an easy meal, and among thieves, and the damned, where do you find an easy meal? Not in the preacher man, or even in that one who cooks our meals. In this nest of sin, where I bathed rarely and slept so, the only answer was to make the rat see itself as an easy meal.
And how, pray tell, preacher, do you make an animal, the vilest one, see itself as an easy meal? How can you create a monsters’ image of itself with a trick mirror so that it attacked itself?
In the north, the deep place, where there is little other than snow and ice, many are forced to live hard lives. Here, everything is used for something, even the bones. To catch wolves, there is one perfect way, to subdue the animal and make it your meal. They plant a sharpened bone, a knife of sorts, in the ice, blade up, covered in animal blood. The wolf will smell it and approach when it is safe and the hunter is away and lick, drawing it’s own blood. In it’s bloodlust, the wolf will lick more, hungering for more blood until it starts to bleed more and more, with less and less on the knife, the wolf gorges on it’s own blood and dies, victim to it’s own greed.
And Inficio would die the same death, by the very thing it covets, it would be found a way to make it less a ship and more a machine of greed. I would destroy the ship and it would carry it’s demon seed to the depths of the ocean, where, I’m sure all the sin aboard will be washed clean.
It took a short time for me to figure it out. Matches, gunpowder all around, I had only to wait till night, to toss the match and make my ambitions known. I’d meant with every portion of my body to go down with them. What kind of demon would I be, to kill the ones who I’d taken up quarters with? A demon, a vile demon, who needed nothing more than despair to live.
When all was ready, I, ironically said the same prayer I’d given to Victus, the prayer that I was sure none of us deserved, as I felt no need to hurry my own demise, I was probably grandstanding over the ship itself.
So when the match ignited, I felt hands on my shoulders, a grip I didn’t recognize. The captain spun me round, with an animals fury on his face, but it was in vain that his mouth opened to scream, his cane held high, as if to strike me, I shook my head once, slowly and dropped to my knees one last time, only a few hours after I’d been bitten by the rat.
Hours passed, and still I could hear nothing, I was floating, but only barely, the boards under me were jagged and I could taste salt. Nothing but salt. I groaned once and shook my head slowly. Something nagged at the back of my mind, but in the muted world I’d come to wake in, I felt slow and fell back out of conciousness.
Upon rising again, I cleared my eyes slowly and painfully, due to the salt and felt pain again, like I couldn’t recall. Turning, I looked over my shoulder and saw tiny eyes in the dark around me, glaring, glowering. The rats of Inficio had not seen quite to the final meals, the easy ones I’d sent to the bottom of the sea.
Irony, greater than any I could recall, I wept aloud, looking to the sky, seeking comfort, but I found none. Inficio had gone down with a great price, it seems, the price of all who touched it, to be dragged underneath. Below the pain, I felt a nudging and turned to see the Captains’ cane beside me, tapping out it’s solemn rhythm against me.
Requiem aeternam dona eis,
Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis,
Requiescant in pace.
Amen.
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