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when the rain starts to pour;
Prompt
Poem
He was English.
That meant he was sensible and sturdy, and filled with a good head of learning. He could recite his letters from front to back to front again, and decent enough in the maths. But he had been too young when the war began to join in the fighting, even if his older brother and father had both gone. He had a tired mother and a little sister. He looked after them.
But he was English, so when he caught wind that the troops were caught in somewhere over there, he knew what he had to do. They had a little boat whose sail had seen much better days, a boat they had taken out on good sails when the skies were clear. The skies seemed to be colored melted silver, now, an indistinguishable colour. He was no sailor, but he knew what that meant.
He was no soldier, either, but he forced his jaw to keep strong when the trailing smoke against the sky grew closer and closer. If he had been alone, he might have allowed the icy, clammy claw to grip his stomach. But his little sister in her yellow and blue flowered dress sat near the front, her young pudgy face implacable. She was too young for the trip, but her fingers were quicker than his with the sail, and she was English, too.
They weren’t alone, either. Small boats and schooners skimmed the channel waters easily, cutting much faster than their little boat. White ships and pleasure crafts and broken boats bobbed up and down around them. He recognized Old Kent’s sturdy boat up ahead, who had allowed him to monkey around on a fishing excursion, where he had caught nothing even as Old Kent came home with an entire net. It felt strange to see the boat now, in such different circumstances.
He knew about the war. He learned about it in school, and the schoolteachers with their stiff chalk-covered sleeves had told them about the war effort. War meant posters and tinned cans and dreaming about fruits like bananas until it made his mouth water. It meant no more sweets in the socks and it meant the small town had become fragmented patchwork with the stores run by women and the school becoming smaller and smaller like tightening the drawstring of a bag, and it meant telegrams and it meant many things.
But as the sounds came closer and closer, he felt like he knew nothing about it.
He had no clock, but he knew that they had made good time with the steady wind and clear skies. The harbor was rapidly approaching, and the sound of explosions echoed faintly in his ears. The silver in the sky was melting into darkness, and the small chin of the moon faintly appeared above him. With a deep breath, he steeled his gut and steadied the boat.
His little sister did not say anything, only turned to give him a shaky smile. She was small but she was English, and that meant a lot of things, too. Her quick fingers now held against the sides of the boat, where the slip-splash of the channel water began to rock their boat more violently. He knew there was planes above them, maybe even the RAF with their Supermarine Spitfires, but it felt like every plane above there was German and aiming for their skins.
He could barely hear himself think anymore, and then he was shouting something to his sister and she was saying something back, and it was like they were suddenly plunged into the hell that the preachers told them on Sundays, and the water rocked against their small wooden sides and water got into his rubber boots and his thick wool socks and the British ships were ahead, he recognized them but never like this, but it felt every explosion was coming for him and oh God he could barely make out anything but he knew that they were sitting ducks, ducks on a pond, and God he could barely make out the sand on the beach and the British ships kept firing kept firing and he didn’t know which way was up and which way was down but he kept his eye on his sister and she kept her eyes on him and they were aiming for the sandy part and he had never been to France not even on vacation and all he knew was that Jimmy had gone once and brought back a souvenir that his parents hadn’t known about it and it had pictures of a lady with dark eyes doing funny things and he wanted to steer his little vacation boat clear from the sudden blasts everywhere he couldn’t hear anything anymore but he could see the soldiers and they were in the water and everything was loud and his sister was pointing but he didn’t want her there anymore she should have been home everything should have been home and they were at War and his hands felt raw against the rope and the sea water got into his cuts and the end of the boat was slippery and oh God it felt like another explosion was happening and the big steel boats were standing there so unafraid so strong like signals on a lighthouse and the men in their uniforms were climbing aboard wet with their honest to goodness guns and they nearing the beach and the moon was so strong the planes could see them they could see them plain as day they needed to take the men and go and he prayed and he prayed so loud in his head that if he had been speaking then he would have been screaming and someone grabbed hold of the boat and
Everything was quiet.
The soldier climbed onto the boat with some difficulty, since the water had been nearly up to his chin. His damp uniform made slapping sounds against the side of the boat, but he stood in the middle of the boat, unafraid. His messy blond hair was damp, and he had especially stern eyebrows and a forgettable face. Night had fallen and it was too dark to make out much outside the boat except the largeness of the British ships and the phantom figures of the men wading chest-deep in the waters, like black ghosts skimming inked waters.
Vaguely, he knew that the sounds should still be happening. Smoke clung into the air before vanishing too quickly, and the violence of the water attacked the sides of the boat as strong as before. But they all sounded muted, like someone had turned down the telly and he could see the newsmen but he couldn’t hear them.
“Ah,” the man said, “Children.” It was difficult to identify of his tone. The soldier examined them swiftly, but intensely. It felt like an eternity under his gaze. The man’s sharp green eyes reminded him of something, something that tickled the back of his head but refused to come out. A vague image drew from his mind of hills and bright spring days and a good wind.
“I see,” the soldier said. “What’s your name, then?”
He asked this to the boy, but it didn’t matter.
“William, then? I like that name. Strong.”
William closed his mouth. He didn’t think he had said his name out loud, but he must have. How else would the man have known?
“And Elizabeth. You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” The man bent down and scooped her up in his arm, and even though he must have been soggy and smelled like sea water, she didn’t put up a fuss at all. It was strange. Elizabeth usually was very picky with strangers and didn’t like to be touched, but she was compliant and even placed her arms around his neck.
“It’s a good ship. It’ll take fourteen and one,” the man continued, but he sharply stopped to look at William again. “Were you praying?”
“Yes, sir.”
William felt the need to answer honestly. He had the sense that this man knew all about his life, from his birth and all else onwards, all about the incident with the apples and the teachers, and the silly play they had put on where poor Sally had been stuck as the sheep, and this man knew he had been praying. But somehow, William was aware that he had to say it for himself. It would do no good for him just to know if he didn’t tell him.
The man seemed satisfied. “About what?”
“… I don’t know, sir.” It all seemed twisted up in his head now. He looked up to the sky for inspiration, but could only see the clear moon in the sky.
“Tell me,” the man said gently, and he put down Elizabeth to kneel on the boat.
“I guess for England, sir.”
“For England,” the man repeated, as if tasting the words. The words must have pleased him because he looked out at the ships now, and then he looked at William.
“Yes, sir. For us to get home safely with the men.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Will,” the man said, and his young face crinkled into a tired smile. “England rules the seas.”
“Yes, sir,” Will repeated. It wasn’t very much a secret. But even if he knew that his country possessed a strong naval power, that night, he wasn’t so sure.
“Miracles will happen tonight,” the man said, “and I’ll show you and Bess everything.”
Bess, in her damp dress, came to stand by Will, and they both watched as the strange man knelt in the boat. Will knew that he should have been afraid of the boat tipping over, with how far the man leaned down, but he wasn’t afraid at all. The man reminded him of his father and his brother and his mother, but he didn’t know why. His father was a boisterous man with tattoos and a thick beard, nothing like the smooth-faced young man. His brother had dark hair and darker eyes, nothing like the green and blond. His mother had a round face and pleasant manners, nothing like this coarse angular soldier. But he trusted the soldier with his life.
The man lifted the glistening channel water in his cupped hands, and he drank it. Some water spilled over his hands and already damp sleeves. When he was done, he opened his mouth
and he breathed.
Out of his mouth came a thick fog, the kind that Will suddenly felt was the dragon’s breath that Merlin had seen so long ago with the white and red dragon fighting every night underneath the broken castle. It didn’t come just from his mouth, but everywhere in the muted world, creeping slowly like cotton to surround the metal ships and small schooners, to obscure the moon in the sky and the planes from a clear sight.
“Did you do that?” Bess whispered, clutching onto Will’s wet hand in fear. He could feel the clamminess of her hand and her heartbeat running through her veins. “Are you a magician, sir?”
“Of sorts. But no,” the man said. “I have done nothing yet.”
Will suddenly felt chills gather down his spine, as if a cold wind had brushed past, and he knew that Bess must have felt it, too, because she only clung harder to him.
“Hear me,” the man murmured into the channel, a hand dipped into the water. “Your daughter calls upon you. Give me back my boys who have died for me. I am your master, and tonight, heed my call.”
Suddenly, a hand clutched onto the side of the boat, crawling up. Bess gasped and clutched onto Will’s arm, and he shook all over despite himself. Because the hand had green and molding skin clutching onto washed white skeletal bones, kept together by broken joints. The tattered remains of a century past appeared. The years had gnawed upon the once sturdy cloth, leaving only the occasion glimpse of wealth behind. The clean white bones clacked loudly against each other, flesh fed to fishes. A skull sat firmly on top, dark eyeless sockets staring into the mist.
And all around the quiet world, through the thick fog, Will made out figures appearing from the deep seas. They were thinner and slower than the dark shadows of the soldiers in the water, but whole ships began to appear, the tip of the hull appearing first before dragging behind the entire hulking body behind. The ships were no longer whole, with patches in their middles, but they stayed afloat all the same. Skeletons and ghosts alike mingled in the darkness, their whiteness fading in and out on the darkness. The residues of their glory had been worn away, but the skeletal figures and haunted ghosts and rotted flesh moved around and steadied their cannons, and suddenly, Will heard explosions and realized that those were the ghost’s firing.
Bess gasped again, clutching onto his hand sharply until he turned and noticed another frigate, next to a few galleons and other ancient ships that he had only seen in maritime books. Small and sharp ships steadied around the British steel frigates, but it was more than that, oh, it was so much more. The temperature dropped abruptly until he was shivering from the wet and cold, but it didn't matter. It felt like every ship that had ever claimed the sea for England was now raised from the ruins, the big ones with white billowing sails all on one another, Captain Hook called from Neverland to do his duties once more. All the fantastical pirates from Treasure Island were here now, Long John Silver roaring with his peg leg still stomping around. The trade ships of the indulgent Robinson Crusoe sailed next to tea clippers. There were schooners and full-rigged ships and shanties and the leviathan cried tonight, for all the sailing boats pulled away from its clutch and came to fight again. There! The ship that had fought so bravely at the Battle of Trafalgar! Admiral Nelson’s rotting corpse aimed the cannons, true and strong. And there! Blackbeard’s phantom figure lurching atop a ship and once more, and no gallows could hold him now.
And he saw the dead come from the water and drag their way onto the boats, and he was afraid at first, until he realized that nobody else had noticed. The ghosts with their flaps of flesh climbed onto the small fleet of boats and were helping to sail the vessels, but nobody gave a cry or shout. The sudden emergence of the old ships had also gone undetected, though the cannons were just as loud as any of the planes.
“It will keep them for a while,” the man murmured before turning to the dead on their own little boat. He inspected him up and down, with a small smile quirking on his lips. “It’s been a while, Drake. You could use a little more fat on those bones.”
He shook the skeleton’s hand with no grimace before turning back to Will.
“He’ll help you home,” he said gently. “Fourteen and one.”
Will didn’t understand at first until he turned around and he saw that a few soldiers were already on his boat, cramming together and talking. Fourteen soldiers.
“Can no one else see them, sir?” he whispered to the man, breath caught in his throat. All his imaginations and fancies could never have taken him this far, to see the dead drag themselves from Davy Jones’s locker to return and fight another day.
“They never do,” the man said, watching the dead fondly.
“Sir,” Bess said, her voice clear as a bell, though her hand shook slightly. “There are already fourteen men on this boat. Is the one you?”
“What? No, of course not. This is Sir Francis Drake. You’re in good hands now,” the man said strongly. “Or rather, good bones. But bones are just as important.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Bess’s eyes flashed a violent color, the sign that she was serious. The man only smiled down upon her.
“Not while there are still men here. It’ll be a while, but these men know what to do.” And already the dead were pushing against the enemy, more boats fluttering away into the night past the harbor. The man’s eyebrows were pushed together with something like pride.
“Please come, sir,” Will said. He earnestly meant it, that he wanted this man to return home with them. “There’s room for one more.”
“She’s already shaking at her brink.” The man chuckled and patted the side of the boat. “No, I’ll stay and help. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Nelson. I’ll be fine.”
“But, sir—”
“It’s all right,” the man said clearly, “I’m always with you. I’ll be waiting for you on the shore, and I’ll be there when the war is over. Take my boys to safety tonight, and we’ll see each other again. I know it.” With one foot over the edge of the boat, he began to slip back into the dark water as the explosions grew louder again, as if someone was turning the telly up.
“Thank you, sir,” Bess said, clutching her hands to her chest. Her face was white, but her chin kept steady.
“I should be the one thanking you,” he said with a tired smile. And suddenly he was plunged back into the water, and the sound was turned all the way up again, but Will suddenly remembered something and he rushed against the side.
“Who are you, sir?” he shouted into the night, but he couldn’t be heard over the sudden din, and the ghost was already driving the boat forward, past the violent splashing and the giant wharves that aimed towards the enemy. As they passed the gilded ships that had lost parts to the ages, he could still make out the ghostly figures gliding around on the top, aiming and loading and firing.
The boat drifted onwards with the little crowd, and the mist stayed atop of them, hiding them from sight. Will watched intensely for any sign of the mysterious man, but when it was clear that nobody had waded out so far, he let himself be dragged back into the boat. Residues of longing still clutched onto his insides as his heart beat fast, though he couldn’t understand why he needed to know so badly, or why he felt that he should have already known.
“I know who he was,” Bess whispered into his ear.
“What? Who was he?” Will looked directly at her, startled.
“England.” Her small hand took his firmly. “He was England.”
Poem
He was English.
That meant he was sensible and sturdy, and filled with a good head of learning. He could recite his letters from front to back to front again, and decent enough in the maths. But he had been too young when the war began to join in the fighting, even if his older brother and father had both gone. He had a tired mother and a little sister. He looked after them.
But he was English, so when he caught wind that the troops were caught in somewhere over there, he knew what he had to do. They had a little boat whose sail had seen much better days, a boat they had taken out on good sails when the skies were clear. The skies seemed to be colored melted silver, now, an indistinguishable colour. He was no sailor, but he knew what that meant.
He was no soldier, either, but he forced his jaw to keep strong when the trailing smoke against the sky grew closer and closer. If he had been alone, he might have allowed the icy, clammy claw to grip his stomach. But his little sister in her yellow and blue flowered dress sat near the front, her young pudgy face implacable. She was too young for the trip, but her fingers were quicker than his with the sail, and she was English, too.
They weren’t alone, either. Small boats and schooners skimmed the channel waters easily, cutting much faster than their little boat. White ships and pleasure crafts and broken boats bobbed up and down around them. He recognized Old Kent’s sturdy boat up ahead, who had allowed him to monkey around on a fishing excursion, where he had caught nothing even as Old Kent came home with an entire net. It felt strange to see the boat now, in such different circumstances.
He knew about the war. He learned about it in school, and the schoolteachers with their stiff chalk-covered sleeves had told them about the war effort. War meant posters and tinned cans and dreaming about fruits like bananas until it made his mouth water. It meant no more sweets in the socks and it meant the small town had become fragmented patchwork with the stores run by women and the school becoming smaller and smaller like tightening the drawstring of a bag, and it meant telegrams and it meant many things.
But as the sounds came closer and closer, he felt like he knew nothing about it.
He had no clock, but he knew that they had made good time with the steady wind and clear skies. The harbor was rapidly approaching, and the sound of explosions echoed faintly in his ears. The silver in the sky was melting into darkness, and the small chin of the moon faintly appeared above him. With a deep breath, he steeled his gut and steadied the boat.
His little sister did not say anything, only turned to give him a shaky smile. She was small but she was English, and that meant a lot of things, too. Her quick fingers now held against the sides of the boat, where the slip-splash of the channel water began to rock their boat more violently. He knew there was planes above them, maybe even the RAF with their Supermarine Spitfires, but it felt like every plane above there was German and aiming for their skins.
He could barely hear himself think anymore, and then he was shouting something to his sister and she was saying something back, and it was like they were suddenly plunged into the hell that the preachers told them on Sundays, and the water rocked against their small wooden sides and water got into his rubber boots and his thick wool socks and the British ships were ahead, he recognized them but never like this, but it felt every explosion was coming for him and oh God he could barely make out anything but he knew that they were sitting ducks, ducks on a pond, and God he could barely make out the sand on the beach and the British ships kept firing kept firing and he didn’t know which way was up and which way was down but he kept his eye on his sister and she kept her eyes on him and they were aiming for the sandy part and he had never been to France not even on vacation and all he knew was that Jimmy had gone once and brought back a souvenir that his parents hadn’t known about it and it had pictures of a lady with dark eyes doing funny things and he wanted to steer his little vacation boat clear from the sudden blasts everywhere he couldn’t hear anything anymore but he could see the soldiers and they were in the water and everything was loud and his sister was pointing but he didn’t want her there anymore she should have been home everything should have been home and they were at War and his hands felt raw against the rope and the sea water got into his cuts and the end of the boat was slippery and oh God it felt like another explosion was happening and the big steel boats were standing there so unafraid so strong like signals on a lighthouse and the men in their uniforms were climbing aboard wet with their honest to goodness guns and they nearing the beach and the moon was so strong the planes could see them they could see them plain as day they needed to take the men and go and he prayed and he prayed so loud in his head that if he had been speaking then he would have been screaming and someone grabbed hold of the boat and
Everything was quiet.
The soldier climbed onto the boat with some difficulty, since the water had been nearly up to his chin. His damp uniform made slapping sounds against the side of the boat, but he stood in the middle of the boat, unafraid. His messy blond hair was damp, and he had especially stern eyebrows and a forgettable face. Night had fallen and it was too dark to make out much outside the boat except the largeness of the British ships and the phantom figures of the men wading chest-deep in the waters, like black ghosts skimming inked waters.
Vaguely, he knew that the sounds should still be happening. Smoke clung into the air before vanishing too quickly, and the violence of the water attacked the sides of the boat as strong as before. But they all sounded muted, like someone had turned down the telly and he could see the newsmen but he couldn’t hear them.
“Ah,” the man said, “Children.” It was difficult to identify of his tone. The soldier examined them swiftly, but intensely. It felt like an eternity under his gaze. The man’s sharp green eyes reminded him of something, something that tickled the back of his head but refused to come out. A vague image drew from his mind of hills and bright spring days and a good wind.
“I see,” the soldier said. “What’s your name, then?”
He asked this to the boy, but it didn’t matter.
“William, then? I like that name. Strong.”
William closed his mouth. He didn’t think he had said his name out loud, but he must have. How else would the man have known?
“And Elizabeth. You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” The man bent down and scooped her up in his arm, and even though he must have been soggy and smelled like sea water, she didn’t put up a fuss at all. It was strange. Elizabeth usually was very picky with strangers and didn’t like to be touched, but she was compliant and even placed her arms around his neck.
“It’s a good ship. It’ll take fourteen and one,” the man continued, but he sharply stopped to look at William again. “Were you praying?”
“Yes, sir.”
William felt the need to answer honestly. He had the sense that this man knew all about his life, from his birth and all else onwards, all about the incident with the apples and the teachers, and the silly play they had put on where poor Sally had been stuck as the sheep, and this man knew he had been praying. But somehow, William was aware that he had to say it for himself. It would do no good for him just to know if he didn’t tell him.
The man seemed satisfied. “About what?”
“… I don’t know, sir.” It all seemed twisted up in his head now. He looked up to the sky for inspiration, but could only see the clear moon in the sky.
“Tell me,” the man said gently, and he put down Elizabeth to kneel on the boat.
“I guess for England, sir.”
“For England,” the man repeated, as if tasting the words. The words must have pleased him because he looked out at the ships now, and then he looked at William.
“Yes, sir. For us to get home safely with the men.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Will,” the man said, and his young face crinkled into a tired smile. “England rules the seas.”
“Yes, sir,” Will repeated. It wasn’t very much a secret. But even if he knew that his country possessed a strong naval power, that night, he wasn’t so sure.
“Miracles will happen tonight,” the man said, “and I’ll show you and Bess everything.”
Bess, in her damp dress, came to stand by Will, and they both watched as the strange man knelt in the boat. Will knew that he should have been afraid of the boat tipping over, with how far the man leaned down, but he wasn’t afraid at all. The man reminded him of his father and his brother and his mother, but he didn’t know why. His father was a boisterous man with tattoos and a thick beard, nothing like the smooth-faced young man. His brother had dark hair and darker eyes, nothing like the green and blond. His mother had a round face and pleasant manners, nothing like this coarse angular soldier. But he trusted the soldier with his life.
The man lifted the glistening channel water in his cupped hands, and he drank it. Some water spilled over his hands and already damp sleeves. When he was done, he opened his mouth
and he breathed.
Out of his mouth came a thick fog, the kind that Will suddenly felt was the dragon’s breath that Merlin had seen so long ago with the white and red dragon fighting every night underneath the broken castle. It didn’t come just from his mouth, but everywhere in the muted world, creeping slowly like cotton to surround the metal ships and small schooners, to obscure the moon in the sky and the planes from a clear sight.
“Did you do that?” Bess whispered, clutching onto Will’s wet hand in fear. He could feel the clamminess of her hand and her heartbeat running through her veins. “Are you a magician, sir?”
“Of sorts. But no,” the man said. “I have done nothing yet.”
Will suddenly felt chills gather down his spine, as if a cold wind had brushed past, and he knew that Bess must have felt it, too, because she only clung harder to him.
“Hear me,” the man murmured into the channel, a hand dipped into the water. “Your daughter calls upon you. Give me back my boys who have died for me. I am your master, and tonight, heed my call.”
Suddenly, a hand clutched onto the side of the boat, crawling up. Bess gasped and clutched onto Will’s arm, and he shook all over despite himself. Because the hand had green and molding skin clutching onto washed white skeletal bones, kept together by broken joints. The tattered remains of a century past appeared. The years had gnawed upon the once sturdy cloth, leaving only the occasion glimpse of wealth behind. The clean white bones clacked loudly against each other, flesh fed to fishes. A skull sat firmly on top, dark eyeless sockets staring into the mist.
And all around the quiet world, through the thick fog, Will made out figures appearing from the deep seas. They were thinner and slower than the dark shadows of the soldiers in the water, but whole ships began to appear, the tip of the hull appearing first before dragging behind the entire hulking body behind. The ships were no longer whole, with patches in their middles, but they stayed afloat all the same. Skeletons and ghosts alike mingled in the darkness, their whiteness fading in and out on the darkness. The residues of their glory had been worn away, but the skeletal figures and haunted ghosts and rotted flesh moved around and steadied their cannons, and suddenly, Will heard explosions and realized that those were the ghost’s firing.
Bess gasped again, clutching onto his hand sharply until he turned and noticed another frigate, next to a few galleons and other ancient ships that he had only seen in maritime books. Small and sharp ships steadied around the British steel frigates, but it was more than that, oh, it was so much more. The temperature dropped abruptly until he was shivering from the wet and cold, but it didn't matter. It felt like every ship that had ever claimed the sea for England was now raised from the ruins, the big ones with white billowing sails all on one another, Captain Hook called from Neverland to do his duties once more. All the fantastical pirates from Treasure Island were here now, Long John Silver roaring with his peg leg still stomping around. The trade ships of the indulgent Robinson Crusoe sailed next to tea clippers. There were schooners and full-rigged ships and shanties and the leviathan cried tonight, for all the sailing boats pulled away from its clutch and came to fight again. There! The ship that had fought so bravely at the Battle of Trafalgar! Admiral Nelson’s rotting corpse aimed the cannons, true and strong. And there! Blackbeard’s phantom figure lurching atop a ship and once more, and no gallows could hold him now.
And he saw the dead come from the water and drag their way onto the boats, and he was afraid at first, until he realized that nobody else had noticed. The ghosts with their flaps of flesh climbed onto the small fleet of boats and were helping to sail the vessels, but nobody gave a cry or shout. The sudden emergence of the old ships had also gone undetected, though the cannons were just as loud as any of the planes.
“It will keep them for a while,” the man murmured before turning to the dead on their own little boat. He inspected him up and down, with a small smile quirking on his lips. “It’s been a while, Drake. You could use a little more fat on those bones.”
He shook the skeleton’s hand with no grimace before turning back to Will.
“He’ll help you home,” he said gently. “Fourteen and one.”
Will didn’t understand at first until he turned around and he saw that a few soldiers were already on his boat, cramming together and talking. Fourteen soldiers.
“Can no one else see them, sir?” he whispered to the man, breath caught in his throat. All his imaginations and fancies could never have taken him this far, to see the dead drag themselves from Davy Jones’s locker to return and fight another day.
“They never do,” the man said, watching the dead fondly.
“Sir,” Bess said, her voice clear as a bell, though her hand shook slightly. “There are already fourteen men on this boat. Is the one you?”
“What? No, of course not. This is Sir Francis Drake. You’re in good hands now,” the man said strongly. “Or rather, good bones. But bones are just as important.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Bess’s eyes flashed a violent color, the sign that she was serious. The man only smiled down upon her.
“Not while there are still men here. It’ll be a while, but these men know what to do.” And already the dead were pushing against the enemy, more boats fluttering away into the night past the harbor. The man’s eyebrows were pushed together with something like pride.
“Please come, sir,” Will said. He earnestly meant it, that he wanted this man to return home with them. “There’s room for one more.”
“She’s already shaking at her brink.” The man chuckled and patted the side of the boat. “No, I’ll stay and help. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Nelson. I’ll be fine.”
“But, sir—”
“It’s all right,” the man said clearly, “I’m always with you. I’ll be waiting for you on the shore, and I’ll be there when the war is over. Take my boys to safety tonight, and we’ll see each other again. I know it.” With one foot over the edge of the boat, he began to slip back into the dark water as the explosions grew louder again, as if someone was turning the telly up.
“Thank you, sir,” Bess said, clutching her hands to her chest. Her face was white, but her chin kept steady.
“I should be the one thanking you,” he said with a tired smile. And suddenly he was plunged back into the water, and the sound was turned all the way up again, but Will suddenly remembered something and he rushed against the side.
“Who are you, sir?” he shouted into the night, but he couldn’t be heard over the sudden din, and the ghost was already driving the boat forward, past the violent splashing and the giant wharves that aimed towards the enemy. As they passed the gilded ships that had lost parts to the ages, he could still make out the ghostly figures gliding around on the top, aiming and loading and firing.
The boat drifted onwards with the little crowd, and the mist stayed atop of them, hiding them from sight. Will watched intensely for any sign of the mysterious man, but when it was clear that nobody had waded out so far, he let himself be dragged back into the boat. Residues of longing still clutched onto his insides as his heart beat fast, though he couldn’t understand why he needed to know so badly, or why he felt that he should have already known.
“I know who he was,” Bess whispered into his ear.
“What? Who was he?” Will looked directly at her, startled.
“England.” Her small hand took his firmly. “He was England.”