The Fifth Day

"There is a sentence that a decent person writes once in his life, and then spends the rest of it trying not to have read."

She read it by herself, at first, in silence, with her lips moving.

The others waited. The Duke had drawn his stool close to the table, and sat with his hands between his knees, his white head bowed, as one sits at a bedside. Roderick stood at the other end of the cloth, with his arm in its sling, his face turned toward the lamps. The sea boomed against the iron door. And Thalessa, with the tissue held close to a flame, read the carved account of the fifth day of the voyage of the St. Jude's boat, and felt the vault go slowly colder around her.

When she had finished she folded the strip in half, and then in half again, and laid it on the table.

"I will read it to you," she said. "I will read it as he wrote it. I shall leave nothing out, and I shall put nothing in. If either of you wishes me to stop, you may say so."

"We shall not," said Roderick.

"No," said the Duke.

She took up the tissue.

…

Day 5. Calm. Very hot. The water is down to a pint a day among six.

They came to me this morning, all five, and sat in the bottom of the boat. They had a manner I knew. It is the manner that men have when they have decided a thing and wish to be forgiven in advance. Dr Malakor spoke for them. He has an excellent voice. He addressed me as "Captain."

He said that they were very sorry. He said that nothing could have been done otherwise. He said that I was a good man, and that I should understand.

I asked him what I was to understand.

He said that there was no more bread.

I said that I knew it.

He said that there was no more fish, and no sign of rain, and that by his reckoning we should be dead by the ninth or the tenth day if we did not find food. I said that was probably so. He said that there was one way to find it. He said it very gently. He said it as one speaks to a child about the death of a pet.

I said, "Doctor, I do not think I can believe that you are saying this."

He said, "I know, Captain. It is why I have sat here a day and a half, working out how to say it."

Mr. Sterling said, "Get on with it, Malthus."

Lady Aurelia put her hands over her face.

Mr. Valerius said, "Please, Gabriel. Please. I cannot—" and could say no more.

I understood.

I will not write the rest of what was said. I will say only that the surgeon reasoned, with a calm that I recognize as the calm of a man in mortal fear, that if any one of the six must die for the sake of the other five, then it ought to be the one who would have to be put to death in any event: the one who would hang them, if he lived.

I said, "You mean me."

He said, "Yes."

…

"God," said Roderick, under his breath.

Thalessa did not look up. She was reading on, and her voice had begun to lose its level.

…

I have been a religious man all my life, but not a particularly good one. I said the prayers aloud, as we do at sea, and sometimes I forgot to mean them. I think that the Almighty knows the difference. I do not think He minds so much as the clergy suppose.

I said to Dr Malakor that I would not resist.

He said, "Captain, we would not ask you to." And then he said the thing that I shall remember longest. He said that if I would give my word not to struggle, they would not tie me. They would feed me first. They would give me the water. They would do it as painlessly as the thing could be done. And he swore, on the honor of his regiment, that they would do it slowly, and not all at once, so that I should not have to die before I was ready.

I do not understand how a man can say these things and believe in his own mercy. I have thought about it for several hours. I have concluded that it is perfectly possible, and that most of the evil in the world is done by people who are doing it kindly.

I told him that I would think.

They went away to the bow. I lay in the stern with the blanket over my knees, and watched the sky.

It was a very beautiful evening.

…

The page ended. She picked up the next, and stopped.

"What is it?" said Roderick.

"He changes his mind."

"How?"

"He says he cannot keep his word." She drew a quick breath. "He says he has tried. He says he lay all night with his hands folded, and when the dawn came, and the surgeon rose, and took out the knife, he found that his hands would not stay folded."

…

Day 6. I could not do it.

I want that written. I want the finder of this to know it. I gave my word to Dr Malakor on the fifth evening, and on the sixth morning I broke it. When he came to me with the knife, I struck at him. I had no strength. I was thin, and thirsty, and my head ached. I hit him on the shoulder with my fist and he did not even flinch. Mr. Sterling and Mr. Blackwood took my arms.

They tied me with the painter, wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle. They did it very kindly. I am sorry to say that it hurt. I am more sorry to say that I cried out.

It was done at noon.

I will not describe it. I will say only that I had not known the human body could bear so much and remain conscious, and that I was ashamed of myself, afterwards, for having supposed that I should be braver.

They gave me water. They gave me brandy, from Mr. Blackwood's flask. Dr Malakor bound the place with strips of Lady Aurelia's petticoat. He was very quick, and very clean. He said it would heal, in time, if I lived. I remember thinking how absurd it was that he should say it.

Afterwards, they went to the bow. I saw them from where I lay. They sat in a ring, with their backs to me. They did not talk. I heard Mr. Valerius being sick over the side, and the surgeon speaking to him, low and quick, in the voice of a man who talks a child through a nightmare.

Lady Aurelia did not eat. She sat with her arms around her knees, rocking.

Mr. Blackwood ate. He ate very slowly, and wept all the time.

I could not hate them. I have tried. I find that I cannot. It is a curious thing, and I record it here for the benefit of anyone who may suppose that suffering teaches us anything. It does not. It makes us more ourselves.

…

The Duke had put his face in his hands.

He did not make a sound. But his shoulders were shaking, and his bare feet scuffled on the stone.

Thalessa stopped.

"Your Grace," she said.

"Go on."

"You do not have to—"

"Go on, Scholar Ashwood." The voice came muffled through his fingers. "You gave me your promise that you would not leave anything out."

She swallowed, and lifted the tissue.

…

Day 7. They have made a pact. They did it this morning, in the stern sheets, with their hands clasped round the tiller. It was Dr Malakor's idea. He said that there was a danger.

He said that when a ship came, and they were rescued, there would be a day when one of them, in a moment of weakness, or fear, or conscience, would say what had been done. And that if that one spoke, all the others would hang.

He said there was only one way to prevent it. He said they must all be guilty. He said that it must not be possible for any one of them to say "I did not." He said that each must take a share of the burden that could not afterwards be denied.

So he took the knife.

He cut a strip from his own thigh. I saw him do it. He did it as he does everything, neatly. He put it in the tin cup. He handed the knife to Mr. Sterling, who did the same, and Mr. Sterling gave it to Mr. Blackwood.

Lady Aurelia refused. The surgeon told her, very quietly, that if she did not, he would tell the others it was she who had proposed it from the beginning. She did it. Her face was perfectly white.

Mr. Valerius was the last. He held the knife in both hands. He was shaking so that I could hear the blade ringing on the metal of the thwart. And he said, in a voice I shall not forget, "If I do this, Gabriel, will you forgive me?"

I said, "Thorne, there is nothing to forgive. Put it down."

He said, "I can't. They'll kill me."

I said, "Then do it."

He did.

They mixed all six in the tin, and cooked it on the thwart over a fire of splinters, and they ate. Even Mr. Valerius. Even Lady Aurelia. They ate it together, in a circle, with their eyes shut. And they have sworn on it, each in turn, on the cup, that none will ever speak of what has been done in this boat.

I was not asked to swear.

I think that is the only thing in all this that I am glad of.

…

She stopped.

She laid down the page. For a moment, she could not speak. Something had risen in her throat, hard and hot and impossible to swallow, and she pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth until it passed.

"The scars," she said. Her voice was unrecognizable. "They are not torture marks. They are not even ritual. They are an oath."

"A blood oath," said Roderick.

"A flesh oath. The first in the boat. So that no one could be an innocent witness." She took a shuddering breath. "And Thorne was the last to do it. Thorne, who held the Captain's arms. Thorne, who said, please, Gabriel, please. He did it because he was afraid, and he went on being afraid for four years, and he died of it."

"Of the oath?"

"Of the poison. But the oath is what made him a man the poison could be given to." She looked at the page. "They are all marked, every one, with the sign of what they did. A scar on the body, so that no one could ever say that he had not been there. And somebody has been reading those scars, the way I read them. And counting. And waiting."

She picked up the next strip of tissue.

At the head of it, in tiny letters, crowded in between the grain, was a sentence that she read twice, to be sure.

Day 8. I have had a long talk with Mr. Blackwood.

She drew the tissue closer.

"Read it," said the Duke.

"I have not—"

"I know what it says." He had lifted his face from his hands. It was gray, and ravaged, and very still. "I remember the day. It was the only day in all that time on which I felt that I was a human being. Read it, child. I would like to hear it."

She read.