The cartographer sat behind his table in the little room on top of the building. Fat raindrops crawled down the banks of windows that lined the north and south walls of the room and pattered peacefully on the roof. The cartographer had lit several lamps to compensate for the cloudy afternoon, and the room was a quiet cave of light.
The old man’s face, tense with concentration, was leathery and lined like a map itself, each wrinkle a line made by the pen of the blazing tropical sun or the ink of a blistering cold sea wind. His hands were scarred and gnarled, but they moved with sureness and skill, caressing the parchment with the pen and ink. He concentrated on his work, remembering the places he mapped as he did.
Hours spent on a ship’s deck with sextant and compass, hours spent marking charts on tables bolted to a rolling ship’s floor, the smell of pitch and salt and gunpowder in his nostrils – each map he made now was a book of remembrances for the old man. Each one was treasured and cherished for the memories it brought before it was sent along with the person who had commissioned it.
With no warning, the door in the east wall slammed open, admitting a cold gust of rain and a young man in dripping oilskins. The man stood in the doorway for a moment, gazing around the room with a slight smile on his face.
“Don’t stand there letting in the rain. Shut the door and state your business,” the old man growled, glancing up from the piece of parchment before him.
The man in the entry stepped the rest of the way in and took off his dripping hat, shaking the water off of it and saying, “Mr. Abel, I take it?”
“Aye, and what’s it to you?” the cartographer asked, examining the intruder. He was a well dressed young man, handsome and looking quite sure of himself.
“Mr. Abel, whose maps are the envy of cartographers everywhere and whose inks are legendary for their colors? Mr. Abel who is mapmaker for the wealthiest merchants and most particular clients?”
“You’ve a silver tongue in your head. I see that plain enough. What I don’t see is what your business is. State it or stop wasting my time!” Mr. Abel put down his pen and looked the man in the eyes.
The man moved forward a few steps, his gaze locked with the old man’s and the slight smile still on his face. “Mr. Abel who reputedly makes the maps for certain – shall we say – independent entrepreneurs of the sea? Maps that form a certain reminder as to where they have, um, invested their earnings?” The man’s smile became wolfish and his voice became harder. “In other words, treasure maps for certain pirates? For instance, a treasure map to where the late great pirate Ignatius Donatu buried his treasure?” The man glided up to the drawing table as he spoke, placing his hands on it and leaning forward.
“Now where would you get that idea?” the old man asked mildly, pulling back slightly. The young man’s breath smelled of stale ale and whiskey, with a few onions added in for good measure.
“A certain conversation overheard in a certain tavern led me to believe that the current captain of the good ship Goshawk – the grandson of that same Ignatius Donatu – might possibly be picking up that self-same map first thing in the morning. I thought that I might make a counter offer – I am sure I can compensate you far better than he can.” The man’s wolfish smile became wider.
“Someone said that, did they? And was this person smoking gilly flower? Or did the bartender run out of the good ale and start serving the stuff they brewed with the moldy grain?” The old man snorted a laugh.
The young man shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve been asking around, and I know you sailed with Donatu in your youth. They say you can make a map of anyplace in the seven seas, just from memory, and some of them say that you helped Donatu bury that treasure.” He paused. “I want it.” The man stepped back and looked at the old man appraisingly. “I am sure that the map can do you no good here – you need a ship and a crew to get it. What did the captain of the Goshawk offer you? A share of the treasure? Whatever it is, I can better it.”
“Now what would an old man like me do with treasure? I’ve everything I want, right here. The captain of the Goshawk is a customer of mine, aye, that is true enough. He pays me a bit for maps, but better yet, he brings me the special ingredients I need for my inks. For me, those are priceless. These inks I make are what make my maps special. The colors, the intensity! And they don’t fade, at least not that I’ve seen in all of my years of using them. These inks will make sure that the world remembers Abel’s maps long after I’m gone.” The old man stared off into space, a bemused expression on his face.
A snarl brought him back from his reveries. “Old man, don’t toy with me. I know you have the map, and I want it. I’m willing to pay, if you cooperate. If you don’t, well, I’ll just have to find it for myself.” A knife appeared in the young man’s hand, slipping smoothly from his sleeve. He flipped it into the air and caught it again, the well-honed steel flashing in the lamplight, then with a flick of his wrist sent it to the wall of map drawers on the far end of the room. The knife slid into one of the flat drawers with a quiet thunk. “Perhaps it’s in this drawer.” He smiled at the old man. “Or maybe this one.” He repeated the move with a second knife that appeared in his other hand. The knives quivered in the wood.
The old man swallowed and his eyes drifted to the side. The young man followed his gaze and stepped smoothly to where a cane was leaning under the windows. “Left your protection a little too far away, did you, old man? You’re slipping. You haven’t sailed with pirates in years, have you? You’ve gone soft, and that’s going to cost you.” The man picked up the cane and with a flourish, twisted it apart, exposing the deadly sword hidden inside it. “Nice piece of steel. Not as nice as this,” and he touched a cutlass at his side, “but nice, nevertheless.”
“I’ll have you know that that sword is the finest Damascus steel! Donatu gave it to me himself, when I retired from the sea. Your blade is bigger, yes, but not nearly so fine.” Mr. Abel spat indignantly.
“So you do admit to sailing with Donatu?” the young man jumped on that piece of information like a shark.
“I never said I didn’t, and it’s a well known fact that I did. So what?” Mr. Abel replied truculently.
The young man fitted the sword cane back together and tossed it to the back of the room and then pulled out his own cutlass. His voice grew soft and dangerous as he slid the edge of the cutlass under the old man’s chin. “I’ll have that map one way or another, old man. It would be a shame to get blood on that nice map you’re working on, now wouldn’t it?” he wheedled. The blade slid along an old scar on the old man’s neck, leaving a faint line of blood.
In one smooth movement, the old man pulled his head back, twisted his body around and jabbed his arm forward. The sharp steel nib of the pen in his hand rammed downward toward the hand on the hilt of the cutlass; the young man yanked away just in time to avoid being stabbed with the pen.
“What is this? A pen against my sword?” His eyes narrowed. “Was there poison on it? I’d have your head off with my cutlass before your poison could even begin to work in my veins,” he hissed. “You’ve been at your drawing board too long, old man, and you’ve forgotten how the real world works.”
He spat on the floor. “Poison is a woman’s weapon. You sailed with pirates. You should be ashamed to stoop to poison.” He slammed the cutlass into the wood of the drawing board, inches from the old man’s hand. “You’ll find it hard to make your maps without your hand.” Then he pulled the cutlass loose and looked closely at the old man.
The old man shrugged. “I guess you’ll never know, will you. Would it make you feel better if I used this instead?” He reached into an earthen jar on the top of the drawing board and took out a flexible quill pen. “Nothing here to stab a man with, now is there?” He smiled slightly and dipped it into a pot of intensely green ink.
“So, if I were to give you this map, what guarantee do I have that you would share the treasure with me? For that matter, how do I know that the crew of the Goshawk wouldn’t hunt you down and take it from you?” He added a few lines to the map, not looking at the young man.
“I really don’t think you have a choice about giving me the map. But I’ll throw you a bone, never fear. If you cooperate, we might even develop a little partnership…you remember things, make me maps, I bring you a share. And maybe I’ll even bring you some of those special ingredients for your inks that are so important to you. As for the Goshawk, my ship is far faster than that old tub. I can sail rings around her on my worst days.” He smiled, a cocky look on his face.
Mr. Abel sighed and shook his head, dipping his pen in the ink again. Then in a movement so fast the young man barely saw it, he flicked the limber quill pen. A full load of the bright green ink flew through the air and splattered in the young man’s eyes. He screamed and dropped his cutlass, clawing at his face.
“Those inks of mine are made with truly special ingredients – and some of them are quite poisonous,” the old man said conversationally. “I have a great deal of resistance to them, after all these years, but you won’t. This one is rather nice – it turns a man’s muscles to water, so he can’t move at all. Easier to deal with a man who can’t move. And while you’re waiting for it to work, it burns the eyes and blinds a man so he can’t, oh, say, cut off your head with a cutlass. As for poison being a woman’s weapon, well, you can say what you will, but I’m an old man, and I have to protect myself somehow. By the way, the first pen just had plain ink on it, not poisonous ink.”
By now the young man was writhing on the floor. The old man dipped the pen back in the ink and went on working on his map. After a while, everything was still except for the scratching of the pen on the parchment.
Several hours later, the old man finally finished the map he was working on, and stood up and stretched, his joints popping and cracking. He stumped over to where the young man lay on the floor and reached into his pocket, bringing out a highly polished watch. He held the shiny metal under the young man’s nose and nodded when he saw a slight mist form on the surface.
“Well, you’re a strong one, I’ll give you that. That much poison has killed larger men than you.” He put the watch back in his pocket and reached down to grab the young man’s arms. With surprising strength, he dragged the unmoving man to the door.
He chatted as he dragged the young man. “Now, if you recover your movement before morning, I’d advise that you be careful feeling your way down the stairs – the railing isn’t any too steady and it will take a while to get used to doing without your sight. And if you don’t recover by then, well, I’m sure that the captain of the Goshawk will be happy to give you a hand out of here. In fact, I know he’d be happy to take out the trash for me!” The old man chuckled and rolled the unmoving form out into the rain and onto the rickety wooden platform at the top of the stairs. “You might want to remember, just for future reference, that the pen can indeed be mightier than the sword if there’s the right sort of poison on it.”
Then he closed and locked the door, putting a heavy steel bar across it for the night. He blew out the lamps, and then Ignatius Abel Donatu went down the spiral staircase to bed. His grandson would arrive bright and early for the map that was drying on the drawing table.
-She Wolf © 2008
