It was not Jonesy's fault, exactly, Wyvern reasoned – much, much later on. But he felt the blame all really started with the dratted… thing, in the jar. And the beef. That was what led to what Jenny became. The beef.
Because Jonesy, poor mite, treated his somewhat squelching new pet with exactly the same sort of care and attention one might give, say, a small puppy. And it was only a small confused child like Jonesy who would see absolutely no difference. He carefully put in handfuls of seaweed, in case Jenny ate weed – which she didn't, but she floated amongst it quite happily. He stared at the jar for hours, into the bargain, whereas once he would have curled up with the toy rabbit, occasionally poking a speculative finger in to see whether she'd try and wrap her tentacles round it. It evolved into a game, like teasing a dog with a stick.
Wyvern didn't like Jenny. There was something unnatural about it; he'd have been happier if Jonesy had had an actual octopus – at least you knew where you were with something you recognised. Having an unidentifiable animal in a jar – well, it could be anything. And almost certainly bad luck. But…
For all Wyvern would have gladly tipped the thing overboard if he thought he could have gotten away with it, he couldn't do it. Not to Davy. It was hard keeping Jenny a secret.
'Whae do ye think she eats?'
They were settled in the lazarette tonight; a warm, small room with a brick-lined oven where meals were prepared. More specifically, meals for the captain, who was a glum, slightly balding man with a slight list to one side, as though he could never quite find his balance. And often crippled with indigestion He was, as Jonesy contemptuously snuffled at him, 'tae small' to be a captain.
Wyvern was amused at that. Jonesy apparently had his childish eye on the rank, but he was the size of a button mushroom.
'How big do you have to be ter be captain, Jonesy?' he asked good-humouredly. 'If I was to go in for it, say.'
Jonesy looked him over. 'Ye're still tae small,' he said stubbornly, from his own modest height of somewhat below three feet. 'Sides, you're Wyvern. Ain't nobody like Wyvern – and ye wouldnae talk tae me if you were captain.'
'And you? Would you talk to me, Jonesy?'
'Maybe.' Jonesy said generously. 'In between fightin' Englishmen an' boggarts an' foreign scum…'
Jonesy had a very particular picture of captains, drawn from the ghastly penny-dreadful tales of the powder monkeys at night. Know-All Ned had an invincible stock of them. Captains were blonde and handsome – those were the good ones, who fought off giant monsters and harpooned huge whales and fought hand-to hand with Spaniard scum. They tended to sound a little like Know-All Ned, true, but… they were still exciting, for all Know-All Ned always saw himself as the hero. And they had to be very tall. This was a large feature of Captains. Perhaps from being small and buffeted about like a small pink cannonball, Jonesy had acquired a very wistful view of what it would be like to be too big to push around.
Or there were the fearsome ones. The other ones, who drank human blood and tied lighted matches in their hair and drank gunpowder curdled and shot their whole crew in sinister pacts with the Devil…
Jonesy had to keep a candle lighted by his hammock after the Blackbeard tales, in case the writhing ghost came after him with maggots crawling in his beard and his eyes dropping out. Know-All Ned had a ghoulish imagination.
Wyvern tapped the glass of the slop-jar, musingly, returning to the problem of Jenny. 'Not seaweed? Or fish? Have you tried fish, Jonesy?'
'She doesnae like 'em salted,' Davy said peevishly. 'An' I can't catch any 'cause they won't lend me anything tae catch 'em with – Joshy says I'm a wee snotty who'll only get tangled up and fall in-'
'There! Don't cry! Don't cry!' Wyvern said, alarmed. 'Look, if she's a meat-eater maybe something else 'll do, eh? Beef? A bit of pork fat? She'll die if she don't eat nothing, Jonesy –'
Perhaps not the wisest thing to say – Davy's face crumpled into the hot pink crushed look of someone frantically trying not to cry – and failing miserably.
'I gots tae look after her! The Pretty Lady said so!' he said urgently, tugging on Wyvern's coat. 'She's mine, Wyvern! I gots tae look after her!!!'
'What?' Wyvern was perplexed. 'I'm sure Jenny's very pretty, Jonesy, but-'
'You don't understand!!' Jonesy wailed in frustration. 'Listen!!! The Pretty Lady gave me Jenny frae the sea; I got to look after her! I gots to!!'
Wyvern stopped dead, a piece of raw and bloody beef between his fingers. 'What pretty lady is this, Jonesy?' And something in his voice made the little boy curl back, evasively.
'I cannae tell! I promised nae tae tell!'
The blood from the beef dripped crimson moisture from Wyvern's fingers, idly falling into Jenny's jar – and making the small thing squirm frantically around her jar like a puppy teased with a ball, trying to find out where the blood was coming from. She bobbed on the surface, making keening noises.
'You can tell me, Jonesy. You will tell me.' Wyvern's voice had gone hard. 'Christ boy, what have you been meddling in? There's all manner of sea-witches and boggarts and mer-maids in the deeps, and now you tell me one of them gave this – thing to you?!'
Jonesy's face went puce. 'She's nae a mer-maid!' he shouted shrilly. 'They hae tails and she ain't got one! An- and' she's nae a witch either!! She's guid, I tell ye, she's guid!! She looks after me, an'…she's nice. But I'll ne'er see her again if I don't looks after Jenny properly…'
'For God's sake… why didn't you say this before?' Wyvern moaned, tugging on his feathery hair. 'That could be anything! From the darkest depths of the abysmal deep – it could be a sea-serpent or a vicious…monster! Could even be a Kraken, God knows, but they're supposed to be all gone now. All the old evils die out, praise the Lord…'
Jonesy looked terrified. 'Whae's a K-kraken?'
'In the depths of abysmal sea, the Kraken sleepeth,' Wyvern told him darkly. 'Supposed to rise and consume the world at the end of all things – 'and then by men and angels shall be seen the Kraken…' Huge, devouring thing – full of ancient hunger…'
Jenny snapped impatiently, making a gummy, slithering sound as she leapt in and out of her jar, sniffing the meat held above her in Wyvern's hand.
Davy looked alarmed – he actually stood on tiptoe to peer through a knothole, in case said monster was rising like Poseidon from the deep to pursue them, before incredulously looking at Jenny.
'Nae Jenny,' he said stoutly. 'Jenny's nice.'
'Oh, I don't doubt that. But what about this 'pretty lady', eh?' Wyvern's voice was anxious. 'Look, she could be anything, Jonesy. Maybe even the Devil in disguise. You wouldn't like to go to –' he changed tack. 'A bad place now, would you? Like your mammy said?'
Had Jonesy been Wyvern's size, he would have knocked him to the floor – as it was, he just butted him with a streaming face, small hands knotted into fists. 'Dinnae ye say that!' he howled. 'No' about her! She's guid! She's better than a mama, even! She looks after me! Ye say that again an' I'll – I'll be glad if ye go to a bad place! I will! I willnae be sorry!'
Wyvern looked down, tight-lipped. But he said nothing, merely waited, until the in truth rather pathetic attack had subsided, before picking up his hysterical young friend and wordlessly giving him the side of raw beef.
'You'd best feed her, Jonesy,' he said huskily. 'Look, she likes the blood. Must be a meat eater, after all, eh? I'm sorry. We'll look after her for the Pretty Lady, I promise. I'd like to hear about her some time, if that's alright? She sounds a mighty fine woman.'
Davy was already contrite. 'M'sorry, I'm sorry…' he mumbled. 'I didnae mean it, Wyvern, really. It's supposed tae be a secret…' He let the beef fall into the water, watching tiredly over Wyvern's shoulder as he rocked him. 'Look, she's eatin' it!'
Jenny was indeed eating it – and viciously, too. Although as yet she had no teeth, there was something savage about the way she let it drift within reach of her tentacles, as though she were no more than a hunk of seaweed, and then – worried it, like a toothless tiger, all quick predatorial movement. She made soft little crooning noises as she bit into it.
'Yeuch!' Wyvern said in disgust. 'She's sucking the blood from it with her tentacles! That's…'
Davy watched with interest over Wyvern's shoulder. 'That's whae they're frae?' he said, wonderingly. 'She's beautiful… better 'n a mouldy auld parrot any day…'
'Beautiful ain't the word,' Wyvern said gruffly, as Jonesy yawned exhaustedly over one shoulder. 'You ought to be asleep, boy. No use nodding over your powder if the French hove in sight, is it?'
'M' nae tired…' Davy said drowsily. 'Nae at 'll…'
'Oh, you're a proper brave one, aren't you? Stubborn as a mule…' Wyvern rocked him a little. 'Now then, say I sing you something, Jonesy. And then you get back aft where you belong. Want the 'Bonny Brown Mare?' or 'A Cobbler's Daughter? –'
'Nae those ones,' Jonesy said sleepily. 'They're borin'. Sing 'Sir Patrick Spens'. I likes that one...'
Wyvern barely knew it; it was a Scottish Border Ballad. Rather typical of Jonesy, he chose no simple, pretty little rhyme – it was a long mournful ballad about shipwrecks, and death, and drowning. But he crooned it, none the less, although it was somewhat lacking – you needed to have, like Jonesy, an accent that rattled through it like a mouthful of stones.
'The
King sits in Dunfermline town,
Drinkin' the blude-reid wine
'0
whaur will I get a skeely skipper
Tae sail this new ship o'
mine?''
Jonesy crooned out a feeble accompaniment in his own, high-pitched voice. Wyvern in truth, had no idea what a 'skeely skipper' was, or how you went about being 'skeely', but it seemed to be the very pinnacle of nautical accomplishment, and Jonesy often reverently described a perfect captain as 'skeely' – so it must be good... By the time he had got to the sixth verse, Jonesy was fast asleep.
