More than Silver and Gold
1711 A.D. – Nantucket
She finished up her work for the day with precision. She was sharp, quick, and very much proud of her certainty in putting things in order. Just as her hands had begun to ache fiercely and she fiercely longed for the fresh cup of tea she reminded herself of her unwavering discipline to complete the task at hand. She had dusted and oiled their tools and stowed them in their proper places. She had swept and snuffed the candles to the wood room and moved into the next warmest section of their house with the lantern. She had her own house. Well, it was her and her John's house. She simply had all the time in the world, and if there was anything she had had too much of, it was that. She had grown rich in it and painfully aware of it and after all the years spent alone, she was just about finished with it.
She had pride in being able to furnish most of Nantucket with her finely crafted chairs for 38 years. Wood from all over New England she had birthed a new life. She would greet every bole with appraisal and admiration and would fuss over little. There was a need for her skills by many, but she had never hired on another. The work was for her and just so. The mercantile township was in its prime and the men as their prime dictated, were gone across the edge of the blue world; in search of that most valuable asset on Gods blue earth - whale oil. She had the mind of a carpenter- which is precisely what her John had first said to her on their first acquainting. They had been inseparable long enough to build the house together and after six years John was gone. He had fulfilled his promise which he had made before her to take his younger brothers stead on the Chrysanthemum had Peter unfulfilled his debt to Mr. Brockton. John's carpentry skill was sought after and Mr. Brockton had had his way. The decision had been simple and had torn them apart; however, the women of their isle did not of habit complain. Peter had died whilst whaling and she did not cry for him. The house was beautiful and simple and though John was not there to fill it, the feeling of him was everywhere. It was in the things that she made. He had shown her long ago, he was so young and strong, flinty and bright.
He was a Quakerman and a shipwright of low-birth. Many men were fortunate or unfortunate to be born into debt to the rich merchants, learning the ways of the sea and the ship and the sail. John had known all there was about the stars from his father and his father's father before him. His father apprenticed him those gifts. John had taught and apprenticed Mary. He had shown her how the carving came naturally to one's eyes and hands and nose. When they had first met, he had smelled of fresh wood and salt. He had proposed to her with a rosewood ring he had carved; inlayed into the band a weave of shore grass. There wasn't a moment when she worked with their tools where she wasn't filled with the nuances of their time together. Just as she once knew long ago that wherever he was, he was filled with the thoughts of her. Months before the departure of the Chrysanthemum he had helped her complete the widow’s watch astride the last gabled wall. It was too soon to be very ornate or large. Their shared humor was filled with love for the present and sorrow for the future to come. On that final day he had again held her and told her not to watch for him - but he'd known she would every night from the way she brushed his hair from his forehead in reply. And so she had waited.
The tea was a simple blend of local herbs. Ones that should assist in the easing of her joints and muscles from the days toil and slightly tinged with marjoram. Mary had grown comfortable with ache. She was wrapped in a shawl her aunt had sent from Barnstable- that which she could use- not like the whale-bone comb she had tucked away in a drawer. It would be another cold evening. She listened to the sound of the shore and felt the freezing air on her face. She kept her glassy eyes open to the sea. She held her breath for a minute and thought of how she would complete the crest of the rocking chair she was amid for Mr. Brockton’s niece - recently with child.
Mary had been barren before John had left. She had lied to him she was with child. She prayed it would bring him back sooner. Mary was grown out of being foolish and then through a dreadful phase of wistfulness. Now she had matured to a point of expertise in being alone, that all that mattered or governed her was her own imagination. She hadn't cried since the day he left. She refused to let the idea even come to mind. There was much to do and with the ever changing seasons. She knew that no matter the internal thoughts and tempests she could always just perform the tasks in front of her. Not one thought mattered, what one did in spite of them, mattered.
Mary listened to the faint knock of the rowboats tackle down on the pebbled shore. She measured the weight of the moon. She tasted the mix of scalding tea within her mouth and looked up at Polaris. She notched the railing with her thin apron knife. And felt with her slender finger the last dozen or so nights ticks along the railing. She was alone. If anything was certain, it was that. She hummed low at first, the song of her and Johns, one of the eight or so songs she knew. It was her mother's song as well. She let the song wind its way outward. She wound a fresh piece of shore grass around the band of her ring, and put the old one that she managed to save that day into the oiled box in the corner of the balcony, under the lee of her body. She made the wish, and closed the box. She took the cup and lantern inside with her.
She wound her way through the hall to the iron wood stove, stirred the coals and added another quarter of a log, then adjusted the flue slightly. She closed the door and picked up the lamp and made her way to the bedroom and set the lamp down on the side table. She turned down the sheets, took off the ring at the window sill, washed her face and arms in the bowl upon the dresser, undressed and put on her nightgown. She knelt upon the small pillow and said her prayers. She climbed into bed, blew out the lamp turned toward Polaris and waited only a few minutes for the sheets to warm and mix with the tiredness and sleep.
She dreamt of him. The way his hair twirled at the back of his neck. The arches of his feet. The veins that stood out on his hands. The ruddiness of his cheeks. The way he was graceful with lifting objects and taking his first steps across a room. She felt his voice in her ear. It was honey and wood and a low burning fire. She felt how they had made love without waste. How they had laughed until tears streamed down their faces over the smallest of things. She felt her corporeal tears through the dream. She wished she could sleep forever. That was where he waited for her.
At some indefinable deep point later that night Mary opened her eyes, and before she saw the frame of the window come to focus, she saw that the ring was gone. The pool of moonlight on the sill was bare and chilled. Her heart rushed and her spine felt a wave of cold. She saw the mist of her breathing losing its last hints of warmth. She felt frost around her eyes. As she sat upright, she felt the temperature around her drop again. She looked around the room - which was as it always had been. She looked twice. Complete silence except for a wind.
'Mary' she heard. 'Mary' she felt. It was John's voice which she knew. She felt him pull at her to rise out of bed and cross the room, down the hall, and out to the door of the widows watch. Light was pouring from it and the curtains were billowing forth. Out on the balcony, hovering above the deck was John.
1679 A.D. - Atlantic Ocean
John lay in his hammock and rotated back to a more comfortable position with his left leg hanging over the side. It balanced the cold and warmth to his body. The sea and its weather shifted as well as the surface of the world and its poles of energy fields. This greatly affected John's mood. He had proven it, and seen the effects of his discovery. The days had droned on and had become mundane in the daily tasks of keeping the voyage going as planned- being the extra carpentry hand on the ship was now an obvious facade. At this point in the dead of nights, when his mind wasn't whirring with the excitement of discovery- he longed for anything else. He missed Mary ferociously. What he needed was found in their successful experimental discoveries all of course entrusted to him by Mr. Brockton.
The previous six years had been a whirlwind and at times a grind. Six years ago he had last seen her face in the flesh and held her to his lips. His child would be grown by now or have died from fever. John considered himself a simple man in his decision. He had not been entirely truthful with Mary. John was not an overtly mysterious fellow. But he had secret knowledge. His great-great grandfather was a free-mason and had maintained that very secret knowledge which kept John's mind fascinated on the long journey at sea. Of course, the crew had caught the sperm whales and retrieved its fine ambergris, which they refined aboard and delivered to trade ports afar and the Americas. John was hired by Mr. Brockton, who, as well, was a free-mason. Mr. Brockton had more in mind for the voyage of the hearty Quakermen. John did help on the repairs of the ship; he did maintain a strong ship with the combined abilities of the crew. They were a manned vessel carrying 145 men. John was often not on the decks until nightfall and for certain periods of the day. He would go there when the position of the sun or moon was right. He was instead in the captain’s quarters a majority of the time. The Captain, Mr. Marlowe was as well, a free-mason, but lacking in the required arcane knowledge which John was privy to under the careful tutelage of his long lost father. The free-masons were free men because they had knowledge and that was more valuable than all the kingdoms and all the riches that came with them.
John's luggage and borrowed containers were vast and complex in compartmenture and contents. He had books and bottles and glassware for alchemy. He had vials and tinctures, metals and pestles, he had, through the Quakermens combined sea faring enterprise, objects from all corners of the world at his disposal. He had animals in cages in certain sections of the ship; he had metals of rarity and metals of explosive property. He had resins and oils and waxes. He had plant life cared for above deck or below, mosses, lichens, toadstools and glass to keep them from the briny air wafting up and down the passageways below decks. He essentially had whatever he needed from Mr. Brockton or Mr. Marlowe, in exchange for his mind. John was a man of languages, and could interpret the books passed down to him for generations. As could his brother Peter, who had passed from the Influence.
What John was discovering was the nature of the Influenza- Italian for the much documented but mysterious illness known as the 'influence.' He had seen tomes as a lad detailing the accounts of those undergoing the 'influence.' He had heard of the queer symptoms and ailments of man. He knew that the influence could accompany any of the following effects: insomnia, catarrh, mucous as well as the other humors, inflammation of the lung, dizziness, headache, nausea, stomach flutters, listlessness, decreased eyesight and sonic faculty. It also was found to cause stillbirth, defects to the unborn fetus, brain and heart swelling. He knew that in certain subjects there were only mental effects. The sanitariums across the earth had filled in recent months. He knew these symptoms by heart. What he did not know, was why exactly this illness was not spread like an infection? He had glass instruments and graduates, spheres for boiling or containing gases and tubes made of the finest materiel. The ship listed and rolled, but John had them inset into wax and clay footing upon the many deck-bolted tables within Marlowe’s quarters. He even had his mug of marjoram tea secured by him as he worked, careful not to drop anything foreign in it. The properties of the influence were such that it seemed to travel by light. John had triangulated by speeds and tonnage of ships the estimated travel and epidemic fluctuations across the globe, and related it to copies of charters and pilots that had been relayed to him though his enlightened brethren. Mr. Brockton, being one of the richest men on the Lords blue world, had many connections, let alone, enemies. Reports of the influence were indicative of a certain pandemic. There had been one in Cairo, Paris, Belgrade, Saint Petersburg and Jamaica, within this year alone. How had it spread without the assistance of location? This was the greatest mystery of all.
Many sorts of things John had studied came together. Within the oldest book in John’s possession, he had isolated in Arabic and Chinese a piece of information regarding Qi or 'life-force' which connects the heaven to the earth. A form of positive energy which exists within the heavens and a polarized negative energy which exists in the earth. Man was the conduit for these energies and could channel them. As well, when lightning storms occurred, or a great wind or tai-fun, these energies discharged one against another. It had been written so for nearly a thousand years.
A significant number of people could detect changes in weather- relevant to this connection of heaven and earth no doubt. A significant number of people could tell when a storm was coming, John of course, being a Quaker and a seaman, always had. He had heard of the ancients in the far East which could levitate and conjure spirits to do their bidding. They could move objects across a distance without the flexivities of the hands or arm. Majic, really, but surely fascinating. John toiled and pondered and had hypothesized and threw entire vellum charts into the chests from which they rested. There had to be a connection, something un-yet known. The botanist on the journey, Mr. Pinschley, in assistance to John had discovered plants were also affected in their growth rate and decay due to the weathers and energy patterns. He could take a glass rod or a rod of amber and effect different changes inproximation to the plants that were sampled. No plant specie to specie gave a uniform result. The simple time at sea had given them a view of the world unlike any other, a true scientific's dream. In fact, in Scottish waters, the Potato plant could grow rapidly, without flavor, an increase in starch, with a wire inserted into the ethereal position near the crop. As well, one in the tropics could make a Strawberry wither and die, or become the size of one's fist by a change in energy current in from the heavenly and earthen ethers- and lose its nutrients while gaining an excess in sweetness. This information itself could lend to the resolution of famine and blight in agriculture. Livestock and animals as well were harmed by the channeling of the glass jar which contained a metal copper coil and water, which had been charged up with the ether. Though it was in some circumstance dangerous, the shock appeared to John himself to be harmless. A line of bluish white crossing between objects was truly an act of the earth- like lightning. Crossing between the experience of God and Man. As of yet, there were three men aboard who seemed to experience no effects from energy charges. The majority of thirty percent of the men took illness from exposure to this energy.
Finally, John had come to the crux of the matter, and in working feverishly by lamp-light for days at a time, with the occasional masonic assistance in conjecture or text, reached a truth. The solar energies and flares and spots contained in Arabic cyclic calendars through the 3,000 years of events- showed pestilence in alignment with solar activity. Had Ra been such an influence? Gods were real, for John knew this in his breast, but could simply the electrical currents beset upon our world truly cause an earthly pandemia? John was certain, and this discovery had to return safely to the free-world. The health of man was at stake, there was no solution to the problem as of yet as to what to do about the ether. John's great-great grandfather had been persecuted from England for his involvement in such sciences and dabbling in the existence of demi-gods and other dimensional ethers. He had discovered the intuitions of animalia to be quite weather related. Before a volcanic eruption, a flood, a storm, much specie had fled only to return when it was safe. The instincts in man were behind and John often wondered if it was not the Lords plan after all for Mankind.
John had as well discovered that all living beasts and birds and man as well as plants, anything touched by the Lord, could be influenced by his Lords energies. They could be made sick or well. Fine minute charges of electricity pushed through a wire into a man's ear at tiny intervals, had cured life-long deafness, and alas, in few cases, caused it; if not extreme pain and mal-effect over time. John as well, on the corollary had discovered that man himself, could create these energies, contain them, and release them. Man did not have force behind his words; however he did have force within his gaze. Enough energy focused upon a scale containing the yeast germ, could kill the germ. Where enough positive or pleasant energies, focused on the plant, could increase its color, growth and longevity at sea.
Why the influence spread by the sun, where no other disease or malady transferred in this fashion, and in other-wise, relied upon proximity contact? There were many questions. The tome had concluded what John needed to know. He had to find a way to improve man’s tolerance for these energies, and man's good faith to control them. Copernicus had alluded to solar flares and solar spots causing illness in his day. Man had beyond the wars of empire's to contend- one common enemy: The Influenza. Would we be able to harness this energia or be wiped out as a species in mystery of its powers?
John worked feverishly and thought of Mary. He could not be with her until this work was complete- but he knew she would fare in his absence. He could feel her heart beat from the horizon. John arose from his hammock and headed back to the Captain’s rooms – he had yet to examine the gold powders properties to his satisfaction.
Leagues from the Chrysanthemum was a black ship of monstrous berth for it ate everything in its path. It had twice the sail despite holes through it beyond mend and uncountable more cannon above its fat sow-belly. It was enshrouded in mist and had its own methods for controlling such. Its hull was strong but slicked-studded with barnacle red stain. It contained an even greater threat to the whaling ship and the rest of the known world than firepower. It contained a member of an arcane sect of Magi who had been born without name. The nameless one kept the ship enshrouded in fog and at distance to the Chrysanthemum and was waiting for the deepest dark of night. One of his runes had been snuck aboard the Chrysanthemum at its last port of call in the form of a feathered native skull. He was magnetized personally to it. There was no escape in the end; they would have her by morning in the jaws of the Black Boar. Only death was in store to all those aboard.
Mr. Brockton had offered John the purest pieces of gold in his treasury. John had done alchemical experiments with it and currently he was perplexed by the white powder in its subatomic form. This was the greatest secret of all and was more curious and strange than anything he had seen with his eyes upon the earth. Depending on the metal coil he had run through the powder, he could change its rotation upon the ceramic plate. He could make it vanish, or float through the air. He saw by ethereal frequency changes the powder perform the wildest of tricks. It would rotate on an ellipsis as well as horizontally. John had found the myth of the gold powder to be true. John had tested a small amount of the powder in the food of a rooster he had aboard. The rooster over the last three months had appeared younger, and healthier, it had faster reflex and finer feathers. The mood of the rooster was quite something to see. He caught many a weevil within the pantry stores in half the speed as before. He as well, despite having clipped wings, was able to fly within days of ration ingestion. John felt it finally safe to swallow the gold for his own internal digestion of curiosities. It tastes like nothing, and he took a safe amount compared to the body mass of the chicken. Merely a handful, really. Nothing to fear. “For sciences sake Mr. Rooster?”
He had been having an amicable chat while checking the roosters memory when the cry from above decks was sounded among a single man. Soon men echoed the call out across the ship from centre to bow and stern and the decks below. A storm was approaching from the East. The thunder erupted in the sky, they would not be able to turn and outrun it. They had to weather it. The storm was one of wind and no water lashed down across the decks until the sky flashed green and the belly of the clouds split open in a torrential rain. The men on the deck of the ship whipped further into action. They lashed halyards and sail, trying to comply with the shouts of the stout Quartermaster.
Time had slowed for John when he arrived at the gunwale. He saw the demon-cloud moving like nightmarish ghosts with such rapidity it could not be believed in retelling to another. He saw the sky laugh at him as it broke and split and cracked. Purple and blue tongues of lightning licked down at the water and caused the surface to glow grey-churn and roll and spray its foam onto the deck of the Chrysanthemum. John spied something even more strange in the deep and darkness of the base of the oncoming rage cloud. The sky was turning to black. He had nearly lost his footing in the slosh and sway of the ship. With one hand gripping knuckle-white at the side- he took out his father’s Galilean spyglass and spotted a strand coming down from the center of the clouds. Surrounding it was a halo of energy. Tethered below the strand and looming onwards to engulf them; was a demon ship in the water, which resembled at such distance the burned carcass of a haunch meat which had been speared a dozen times and wrapped in a torn shroud of black sail. He heard a snap above him as a boom broke free; it pulled a man from his feet and launched him through the air. The main sail was tearing free. Then he heard the sound of the heavy cannons erupting in ragged time. The sight came before the sound, John knew. The deck was ripped apart. Shudders and screams battered against the hull, the bowing of the timber, the cracking of the wood as splinters erupted. The cries of the men were drowned by the tempest. John screamed as loud as he could that they were being attacked on the starboard side. The men with the quickest minds were grabbing at harpoons or muskets and trying to swallow their courage. John flung down his father’s glass and drew his knife. He began cutting at the ropes which held a mans arm trapped to the gunwale. He called back over his shoulder to his fellows. A man took aim with his primed pistol but was cut in half and his lower abdomen sprayed outward mixing the deck with his red humor. The ship was listing forward as its bow had been decimated. They were taking on water from the cannon shot. They were now in the shadow of the black Boar. Grapple hooks flew over the side from above, hooks made of lashed bone, femurs and ulnas and bits of metal woven together. The bravest came forth with hand axes to sever the ropes pulling taught. Arrows flew over the side and down on the deck, pinning limbs and feet in place. A man laughed in insanity as he realized he would not slip in the storm, his tibia protruding from his boot top. Men rushed up on deck from below where they were bunked- half dressed and naked except for arms and weapons. Marlowe stood atop the quarter deck and hefted a curved rapier. He was without his cornered hat and in his trousers and shirtless. He boomed the men to rally for the boarding of the ship. The Quartermaster echoed his cry. The Quaker men moved forward galvanized by their increased number towards the carnage while staying packed together tightly, many had seen the blood of whales awash the deck and fought the beasts from the depths as well. Many had held each other in their last moments of life- fatally injured by a crazed whale or a boom that had swung free. Those with muskets fired up into the shadows of the enemy hull without coordination. They were twenty feet above them. The pirates were mortal men, as they fell down to mix in the blood on deck. They had never seen such a change in weather or an assault from pirates- but what else were they to do but fight with every sinew and intention to survive.
John looked at the pulsing strand in its distance to them at less than 100 feet. He followed it down its tether. In the roll of a giant wave, as their ship ascended while the enemies sunk downward in lull, he saw atop their quarter deck the devil himself holding the wire to a contraption aboard. The electrical energies were rising upwards towards the heavens. The devil was dressed as an Arab, with bone’s protruding from his lips and eyebrows and chin, runes pained upon his face. He had his arms wide and head back while his cape was billowed-torn around his shoulders; conjuring up at the thunderous sky falling. He had harnessed and brought the storm.
John moved forward wading through the stinging rain and men clashing in combat. Pirates invaded over the side or swung down from above. He raced to a shorn mast and grabbed a harpoon. When the bodies parted he darted forward quickest of all on his boots. For he had soled it with metal nail heads years ago. He found purchase heading up a wash of stairs to the foredeck. He was going to board their ship. He had to slay the Magi- if the battle was lost- so be it, if won, they would surely sink to the depths with no hull. The storm had to stop. The men behind him fought bravely and died quick and slow in the nights rain. He passed men crying alone bloated with arrow. He saw one man drunk and staggering forward with eyes wide and in disbelief. John swept past him.The ships parted as the storm crazed and churned with ungodly force. John faced his first foe and bashed the harpoon’s stock into the man’s nose creating a blossom of red. The man cried out and swung wildly again with his cutlass. It bit deep into John’s forearm and stock. John felt the cannon of his own ship burst below decks trying to force the enemy ship apart- they had fired at once along with their eight cannon barrage. The magazine must have exploded from a mistaken unlashed cannon or a fire. He was launched toward the starboard while locked with the other man. They hit the side with a crash, John held on for his life as the man spun out over the side toward the black shattered glass of water below. Johns grip held, but he lost the harpoon. His father’s sheathed knife would have to do. He grabbed his arm and felt the warmth of his blood squeeze through his grip. John brushed his hair back and looked at a severed rope whipping in front of him- it was hanging to the gunwale and slapping the black sow’s oily hull and thought of his Mary and the brothers aboard before launching himself over the side. His hands reached out into the darkness.
1711 A.D. – Nantucket
A version or a glimmer of him. No, him, more of him hovered there. He was cold yet warm and everywhere, pulsing like a dream. She couldn't describe at all what she was seeing but she knew this was only the work of the Lord. He was wet, as if underwater, his hair was floating around his crown. His eyes were steady and radiant. He was smiling down at her. 'Mary', his thoughts filled her. The light streamed from him as if morning dew slid down cobwebs in every direction. He was the stars and the ocean. He was not frightening, he was expanded and the quality of everything she loved and had missed and had wished for. He reached out his hand to take hers. It beckoned with reliability and promised to fulfill her and she knew that he would keep that promise. She did not know why, she did not know how, she only knew that this moment was either heaven or nothing at all. Hours or seconds had gone by when the connection was made between them. There was no more house, there was no more rocking chairs, and there was no more lightness or dark. There was endless space and they were in it, together. His thoughts mingled with her own, from what he knew - she now knew. Her body had changed, the husk of her old age had disappeared, the color of her hair now burned brighter than in her youth, the muscles in her body tightened and tingled and rippled - yearning to run and fly and swim among stars. She was her again. They were the best of each other and she knew they had to go as John would explain everything in time. They had to leave as there was much to do to stop the influence.“I was never pregnant.” She whispered and he assured her “I understand. I have a few secrets to tell you of my own.”
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