Chapter Nine #5
“Monsieur…” Jürgen cleared his throat, this time addressing Emerick. “Officer Weber tells me you have found yourself without entertainment and have taken to walking the deck at night. It is dangerous to be unaccompanied in the dark.”
Silvio’s hand froze over Emerick’s hip, and he looked up from his plate, searching for Officer Weber among the guests.
“You are welcome to peruse my private library.” Jürgen’s cheeks were flushed from the wine and it made him look boyish and charming.
He looked so pristine, surrounded by his men, all dressed in their finest: gloves placed on their knees, cravats ironed, the brass of their buttons shining light of the lanterns.
“I would love that.” Emerick smiled, looking forward to the distraction.
Once the modest dinner had concluded, they invited him and Silvio to stay for a glass of sherry; a luxury Emerick had no appetite for.
He had no patience to linger at the table with the officers and make conversation.
That was far more to the Marquis’ taste; he would leave Silvio to talk with the men and make merry.
True to his word, Jürgen made an excuse for him and guided Emerick to the rear of the captain’s cabin.
He apologised for the clutter on the desk and the crumpled sheets on his bunk.
Slightly larger than ours, Emerick scrutinised the sleeping space.
Though it did not look like the captain was sharing with anyone.
Good, Emerick took note of that little detail.
Jürgen presented him with a well-worn leather tome, its pages yellowed from time and use. The title was etched in gold letters on the front, in German.
“Ghost stories at sea?” Emerick laughed, flipping through the book. “Are you trying to scare me, Captain?” What an odd choice of literature on a ship plagued by so many deaths. There were pictures of a ship at night, not much different than their own.
“If the book is not to your liking, Monsieur, perhaps…” And here Jürgen looked around the room eager, searching. His eyes fell on the table with the charts and dividers. He picked up a ruler and pointed it upwards, first at the ceiling then whipped it towards the window of his gallery.
Emerick’s eyes followed the movement, for a moment lost for words.
“I’ve seen you at night… Monsieur.”
When you are on deck, you always stand so still and gaze at the sky. You search the night stars with a sadness in your eyes, I…
“Captain.” Emerick tore himself from the tide of thoughts that spilled from Jürgen.
His voice was loud and too sharp for the kindness being offered.
“Captain,” he repeated more gently, drawing closer.
He reached and picked up the ruler, pretending to brush Jürgen’s fingers by accident.
“Are you stalking me, Captain? I thought the men aboard were dying from sickness, or is there a prowler in our midst?”
“N-no, Monsieur, I… It is nothing but ship fever! I have seen the symptoms before—the hallucinations, the loss of appetite. It will pass,” Jürgen stammered, too stunned to draw back when Emerick shortened the distance between them.
“Very well.” He nodded and kicked one of the chairs from under the table.
Jürgen did not seem to notice it. “Teach me to navigate by the stars, so I am never lost, so that I know how to find you, Captain. Mon Capitaine.” Emerick purred, enjoying the flush spreading on the man’s cheeks and neck, the shine in his eyes.
Jürgen nodded, uttered something quietly to himself before clearing his throat and pulled out a chart, a shining sea of ink dots and careful markings.
The lesson lasted until dawn.
A series of cold winds besieged the vessel after barely a fortnight of smooth sailing, drawing out what little warmth had been left in their cabin.
Frost danced on Silvio’s eyelashes. They had turned white, giving his eyes a ghostly glare.
Emerick blew on them and the frost melted into tears on Silvio’s face.
He licked them, edging into Silvio’s hand as the Marquis worked him, grip tight and pumping.
They had fed on another passenger; another nameless corpse drifting somewhere in the dark, while their own bodies were warm and eager.
“We shouldn’t… look too… healthy.” Emerick tried to keep his voice steady but his hips rocked with the movement of the ship. Silvio’s thumb was playing with the head of his cock, and he squirmed.
We have to be careful, he wanted to add. We’ve killed far too many of them already.
“I will not watch you starve,” Silvio objected, his free hand pulled at Emerick’s long hair, winding it around his palm.
“No… you feed me plenty.” Emerick nodded and leaned in.
Silvio laughed, amused by the implications, and the accusation, in the words.
He always had a voracious appetite and seemingly bottomless amount of vigour, enjoying Emerick whenever it pleased him.
Their lovemaking had been frequent enough even before he finally freed himself of his wife, but there was another factor at play now, one that drove Silvio insatiable: mad with equal cravings for flesh and blood.
They no longer needed to hunt daily, not for centuries, feeding at their age was for pleasure alone.
Something had changed within Silvio; something Emerick could not quite name.
Were the other Regents so plagued and starved when they ascended?
“Marquis—”
“No.” Silvio’s hand moved faster, up and down the cock. He let go of Emerick’s hair to grab him by the throat, and squeezed, his fingers still entwined in the long strands. “We have no titles on this ship.”
“Sil…”
Emerick gasped, his voice hitching. It embarrassed him how easily this dirty little trick had undone him.
He spilled into Silvio’s hand with such force, his body buckled but there was nowhere to go.
He was trapped between the cabin wall and Silvio’s body on the bunk, wriggling like an eel caught in a net, and he did not want to be released.
It felt good. He moaned when Silvio finally released him, all of him, to lick the semen off his palm and fingers.
Propping on one side, Silvio pulled a book from under the pillow and tapped it against Emerick’s head. It was the book Jürgen had lent him, the one about the Flying Dutchman and its ghastly crew. He planned to return it tonight.
“Where do you keep finding these novels?”
Emerick chuckled. He took the book and opened it, easing into Silvio’s embrace. For once the bunk did not feel cramped.
“A sailor gave it to me.”
“A sailor,” Silvio scoffed. “I have built an entire library for you, and still you collect pamphlets everywhere we go.”
“The library you speak of is back on shore, at the tower. So I will amuse myself with whatever little I can find until our return. I cannot believe I am saying this, but I miss that monstrosity you call a home. I miss our bed.”
Emerick’s bones ached from the very memory of the silks and velvets, the vast mattress and the mountains of pillows and blankets. Silvio’s lips curled into a pleased smile.
“The Marquis is a very lucky man,” Jürgen confessed. “I would give anything to stand in his place, Monsieur.”
Emerick lowered the spyglass and turned to the human.
The night was cloudy, and their lesson had been cut short, with no stars to mark and trace.
He had hoped that they would resume in the captain’s cabin, examine the nautical maps, and search for the nearest port.
Jürgen’s mood had been sour when he greeted Emerick tonight, and Emerick presumed it was because of the growing number of deaths.
But something else was worrying his captain.
He had heard an officer complain how the captain was raving, searching the hull for mermaids. A siren…a siren was on board, he claimed. Yet there were no women onboard; Der Merkur carried only men, angry, hollow-eyed and starving.
“I know you will not leave him, but come with me.” Jürgen’s eyes trailed the black horizon, the sky and the sea had melted into an angry dark substance.
“When we anchor, come away with me. Be with me one mortal lifetime, stay with me until I die, and then return to him. He will have you for eternity. Let me have you until I die.”
“You have been reading too many ghost stories, my friend. Or has the sickness reached you as well?” Emerick felt sorry for him. Yet he had done nothing to discourage Jürgen’s delusion. Indeed, he might have even fed it, granting the captain his attention. “I am no siren.”
The chaplain’s body had been sewn into a sheet full of holes.
There were no prayers, no kind words to see him off when the men lifted the sack and tipped it overboard.
The remaining crew of Der Merkur had no need of kind words or prayers.
They needed water and food, someone had gone and thrown away their provisions.
The Marquis’ crates of wine had run dry days ago.
They needed to send the sick to shore, but the waves battered them on, casting them further and further away from any hope of relief.
After the sea burial Emerick had dipped into Jürgen’s mind while the captain slept.
His dreams were distorted, disturbing things.
They swung back and forth between the sublime and the unmentionable, like a pendulum.
The boundary separating the dream from the nightmare no more than a thread Emerick could seize and tear.
In Jürgen’s dream, Emerick was pale, a creature dwelling in the deepest, darkest reaches of the sea, prowling the ocean floor in search of prey, forever hungry.
Even his hair—here long and trailing behind him into the dark—was white.
The only thing Jürgen had recognised of Emerick were his eyes, black and lifeless, pupils dilated.
He had webbed fingers with claws that raked at Jürgen’s legs as he dragged the captain down into the water.