“This ‘Main Room’ was a close, shadowy, cluttered chamber. The first thing Amadeo noticed was the elegant bar, the second, what was plainly the room’s presiding spirit hanging behind it, a brightly colored portrait illuminated by two lamps. Amadeo stopped for a moment to stare.
The painting depicted a decapitated man seated at a table and toasting the room with a tankard made from a human skull. This convivial gent’s head lay on its side in a pool of blood on the rough boards at his elbow. The artist had done a fine job of making the eyes of the head alive and intelligent, its smile white, its sodden black beard tied into strands with blue ribbons, and tangled like the arms of a squid in the crimson puddle.”
(To see The Captain — if you really want to — you must click the link on his name and enter the toast “tothecaptain.”)
“I am so stupid sometimes,” she said. “I believe one day I will drink the wrong cup of tea. I will utter the wrong word. I will take the wrong step. And it will kill me. Or it will kill you. Or it will destroy everything. Life is like that, Amadeo. It only takes one mistake to…”
His arms around her had tightened, and he’d kissed her. “Oh, Hortense. You must not think such things. I would never allow that to happen.”
“My descendants reading this a century from now, I wonder — is the Besquille still danced on the island in 1984? If not, Touperdu has become a sadder, if less wicked place. Read, my sons, and envy your ancestors.“
Recently, I discovered AI generated images. I think every now and then, on Thursdays, I’ll share an image I’ve created, inspired by my novel All Is Lost.
Herewith — The Besquille, an island dance that involves a lot of stomping, whistling, and accordion music.
The Besquille consists of five rounds. Only the first three are done in polite company.
After Midnight Mass, there was the usual confusion of departure as carriages edged past each other, drivers holding up their whips in salute. Their carriage, unlike the others, turned down dark, silent Drum Street, and Amadeo rested his head against the backrest, looking towards the bay and at the stars.
They were passing the closed stalls of the market when Corl said, “Look sir,” and pointed towards the blackness of Sanctuary Bay. “The Little King is coming.”
Teach had mentioned this to him. Every Christmas, in the dark hours of the morning, the Out Easters brought the Holy Infant into Saint Nicholas.
Amadeo had thought Pinny still asleep, but she sat up in his lap. “Oh! Papa, can we see?”
“Cher, it is late, and your mother is tired. If we wait too long, Papa Noel will find your little sister sleeping alone and leave only one stocking behind.”
A distant “pop,” and what looked like a sputtering star rose and fell over the rooftops of the market. Someone was firing Roman Candles on the beach.
“But I am not tired, Husband” Hortense said. “And I am sure Papa Noel will understand.”
“Turn around,” Amadeo told Corl. “Let us off at the Long Steps.”
“Aye, sir. You won’t regret it.”
Usually, when Amadeo thought of the Long Steps that led down to Sanctuary Strand, he pictured the summer day they had landed. He saw Dr. Teach with his ledger in yellow sunlight and heat. The steps had led down to the blazing expanse of sand where people moved about and shouted at each other. Wheels had creaked and weary horses huffed as they climbed the hill road, their flanks smelling of wet horsehair and dust.
This was not the same world.
They paused, Amadeo, Hortense, and Pinny in between them, at the top of the stairway. Someone had set out torches every few yards alongside the stairs. The stone steps, harsh and gritty in daytime, looked golden, and led down to a pool of darkness as profound as the waters of the bay. Across that black a small cluster of lights flickered on the beach near the shore. The moon was in its last quarter, and the waves glowed in white curves as they crested.
Hortense bent. “Look,” she said to Pinny. “It is like the Arabian Nights.”
Pam Troy 