The Marquis Papers Volume One: Vampire Island

Full Table of Contents With Notes

Dedication

Preface

1. How I Came To Be Damned My sins, my origins, and how I came to be a cabin boy aboard the Albatross.

2. An Abandoned Ship An account of how we encountered an abandoned ship after a storm blew us from our course in the West Indies.

3. My Betrayal: All Crew Lost Contains a straight forward account of our attack and what I saw of the battle.

4. Monsters My initial impressions of our attackers.

5. A Devil Captain My first meeting with Captain Minuit.

6. Dead Killed by Shark. I learn of the fate of the crew.

7. Assassin My killing of Mr. Shark. Pedro’s lore.

8. My Imprisonment Detailing the time of my imprisonment and the attempts to convert me. Given to the best of my ability since I was under great duress. Also describes the last hours of shipman Gregory Armstrong.

9. My Servitude An accounting of my crimes while a Mesmerized slave.

10. Escape My plan and its execution, My new companion Francois.

11. Slaves An accounting of the crimes committed while a slave. A Zombie encounter.

12. Cat and Capture! A description of my wandering in a strange city and the nefarious means by which I was tricked. Names and descriptions are given of those responsible for the crime for the enlightenment of honorable men everywhere.

13. A Treaty A short description of my imprisonment. Some of the conversations I engaged in with M. Minuit. Our eventual understanding.

14. Death of A Shark The crimes and challenge of Captain Minuit.

15. Slaved to Vampires An account of my crimes, done voluntarily in the service of a vampire crew. A pirate encounter, a Carib rescue, and my punishment.

16. Vampire Island The families of vampires, the herd, and my near death at the hands of children. (A description of the ways of this island, known commonly as Saba, of the Dutch Windward West Indies.)

17. Vampire Village Includes a harrowing account of my journey through Hell’s Gate. The Flogging of Spike, The Customs of the Village.

18. Rebecca My unfortunate acquaintance with the young lady. Urchin’s protection.

19. Chronics A description of the relations between vampires and Chronic Zombies.

20. Zombie Attack The battle, my observations, and my first encounter with Blood Weaving.

21. Mr. Tuck My encounter with the kindly Mr. Tuck, his wife, and her knife.

22. Experiment and Mayhem I discover something about my blood and Rebecca tries to kill me.

23. Shock, A Plan, and Recapture I recover, take control of my life, and am recaptured by a welcoming crew.

24. Zombie Melee Urchin’s strange power foretells of an upcoming attack.

25. Blood Weaver I am marooned and learn of Blood Weaving from Grutte.

26. Inner Power I discover a trick and am nearly thrown over a cliff.

27. Blood Oaths A description of a sort of sorcery and my necessary engagement in this sorcery to procure my freedom.

28. The Priesthood Of my dreams and aspirations during my conditional freedom.

Editor's Notes

About The Author

Other Books by This Author

Connect With C.J. Maloney

A Chapter Of The Red Hand

Dedication

To the Carib natives who have kept their language alive, and to you, dear reader, for helping it live on.

Preface

From the editor:

On a rainy Tuesday in the spring of 1967 in Breton, France, my father purchased an old chest inscribed with the chiseled name of Capt. C. Johnson. Whatever craft project the chest was meant for never took place, and it moldered in our attic for many years. Finally a few years ago my father decided it was time at last to move to assisted living, and we cleaned out the attic over several long weekends. In lifting the chest, I was startled that the bottom seemed to have rotted through. On closer inspection, it was made of two thin boards rather than one thick one. Between the boards was sandwiched a wrapped, yellowed, and mouse-eaten manuscript. In a moment of generosity, my father gifted me both rotten chest and smelly manuscript.

I have tried to piece together the manuscript and present it here, retyped to the best of my ability. I have modernized language and spelling, and was forced to complete some sections that were rendered illegible. As to the truthfulness of its claims, I cannot say.

- C. J. Maloney, February 1st, 2017.

1. How I Came To Be Damned

In September of the year of our Lord 16-

I am a fraud. My title, my power, my very name are not my own. How I came to be the most damned of men is set down here as my final confession. In these pages I will tell how I broke bread with Vampires and shared their friendship. In my confession I hope to explain the Great London Fire of 1666, the proliferation of plague deaths in the city, and how I came to murder an Archduke.

My confession is not meant to obtain my own salvation, but to hold those others who accompanied me on my travels blameless. Among these are my dear Cat, the hearty Antoine, and Senor Ramirez, who was more a father to me than my own. When I pray for forgiveness it is not for myself, but for them.

But I go too quickly. A man’s descent into hell is paved as a boy. Let me begin my confession just before my first encounter with the vampires.

My true name is Thomas Hawkins, descended from the pirate Jim Hawkins, who was a terror of seas. I believe he was a great grandfather, but my father James gained none of his drive or charisma, only his love of drink. So perhaps my own descent into knavery was preordained.

At the time I first encountered the vampires I was a cabin boy of the Albatross, an ill-fated, rusted and pockmarked caravel, a low decked trading ship unfit for long voyages, doing shipping duty between Hispaniola and the Dutch Indies. She was barely afloat in the best of times, and the first mate Pedro joked she had more cracks in her than wood. Previously she’d been known by another name, the Santa Clara, also known as the Nina, and the original lettering was still visible under the crudely drawn lettering of the Albatross. In her day she’d been famous, or so they said, the only ship to survive the 1495 hurricane. Some rumored that she was the original Nina brought over by the great Columbus, but it was hard to believe even this old hulk could be that old. It was a standing joke that old Captain Cristobal owed more on her than she was worth, so was forced to sail the seas with her about his neck.

Rotten planks and seaweed encrusted sides, I loved her just the same. She moved with a grace that denied her age, and she was no ordinary boat. There was something about her that made you want to ride her into the horizon. By all rights my time on her should have been short, but she kept returning to my life just when I thought I’d quitted the ancient lady.

How I came to be the Albatross’ cabin boy is the story of my father, an Englishman wooed by tales of Incan gold to leave his native land and speak in the tongue of foreigners for the rest of his days. He found himself penniless in the Hispaniola port of Cap-Francois, where Columbus crashed the Santa Maria. My father met my mother there. My mother, a tavern serving girl who could have married better, saw my father with his thick brown hair and full beard. She was reminded of the images of the blessed Jesus, to whom she’d given her heart long ago. My father was remade in her eyes and through her love, and returned to Catholicism. He gave up drink and worked in her father’s store in Cap-Francois. I was born on a tiny farm outside of that settlement.

I was my mother’s greatest blessing and greatest curse, for something broke in her when she bore me. She was never the same. I could see the pain in her every day of my life, but I could also see the love. From the time I knew my own name, I would watch anxiously for the signs of pain in my mother’s face, ready to run for the settlement’s one ancient doctor. Even at night my mother’s slightest cough or movement would stir me, and I would lie awake for long hours listening to her breathing, ready to spring up to rouse the doctor from his bed. There was little he could do for her, but I spent many hours sitting anxiously on our dirt floor looking up at him comfort her and give her what things he could. Perhaps I absorbed something of his craft, but did not realize it until I came of age.

My childhood was troubled. As a half-breed with a priest’s devotion to honesty I was often teased and beaten. When my fellows killed a pig with stones, I told the owner and they received whippings. Soon after I was lured from my mother’s side by the promise of sweets by the other children and was locked into a rotten building with a vicious dog. The dog attacked me and bit me badly before its owner heard me and rescued me. It died of the foaming sickness a short time later. I became deathly ill but I have no memory of the event. My luck was very poor and I was bitten again by a second dog as I was rushing at night to fetch the doctor for my mother during one of her bouts of worsening illness. That dog also died of the sickness, but I did not become ill. On a third occasion I saved an older child from a vicious animal by thrusting my arm between its jaws until a soldier could skewer it. I bear the scar to this day, but again I did not become ill.

My mother died when I reached my ninth year. Her long illness had drained the family of all its will, and my father returned to drink. He worsened within months until he did not come home at all. I do not know what became of him, but I can only assume he stumbled into the ocean or was killed by other drunkards for the little money he’d been able to beg. If I seem cold to him in my prayers even to this day, there were many beatings over the months before he disappeared, and little enough love between us before. What I wanted from him as a father I never received, and after his disappearance I never would.

After my father’s death so soon after my mother’s I fell into a darkness. My grandparents tiptoed around me and I could not be a help to them. The only act that interested me was watching the sailing vessels arriving and leaving harbor. Perhaps I too wished to sail away, to leave this life. But these thoughts are an old man’s recollections, for all I knew then was darkness. I refused all food after a time.

Although my grandparents meant me well they had nothing for me. I attended endless masses with my grandmother, but spent my time staring up at the gruesome image of Jesus splashed with red paint and wondered what it felt like to be pierced in the side. My grandfather was crippled with long work, and only looked at me and sighed. Years later they sold the small store and sailed back to Spain. I never found out where they ended their days. But at the time I lived with them I cared for nothing. I regret it deeply now, but that does them no good.

My grandparents, desperate for me not to follow my parents, sought a placement for me as a cabin boy. But no captain in his right mind wanted a cabin boy as surly and withdrawn as I was. I was a shy boy at the best of times with large, watchful eyes, broad shoulders, and long fingers better suited to the harpsichord than scrubbing pots. My grandparents offered to pay Captain Cristobal for my keep, signing me on his vessel more as a passenger than as crew. So I was taken aboard the Albatross.

If I had been left alone I might have perished because I was already wasting away. But whether from lack of caring or by design Captain Cristobal failed to inform his first mate Pedro of the arrangement.

Captain Cristobal had once been a nobleman who had dreamed of exploration in Columbus’ very own ship. He had shrunk in on himself from other’s ridicule of his foolish purchase of a rotten old tub. His sunken watery eyes, hollow cheeks and hunched shoulders all belied his still straight back and dignified stance. The Captain would withdraw into his cabin in the back of the hold and drink cheap rum slowly all day long. At times if you were near the partition that made up his wall you could hear him muttering to himself about past grievances.

So first mate Pedro ran the Albatross. Pedro made his money by carrying things he should not have, buried deep in the hold in locked chests. He’d deliver these things to shadowy figures and split some of the proceeds with the rest of the crew. Some of these shipments were arms, but once we carried some books written by a German heretic. It did not matter if the price was right.

Pedro had a round, soft body with great ham fists and a flat face. Below his small nose he maintained a peach fuzz he tried to wax into a moustache, but which broke up into small spikes that looked like whiskers. He looked like a great pug-nosed rat, but to even glance at his lip and half-smile was worth a week of hard blows.

To Pedro, I was one more split of his ill-gotten gold and he’d get the worth of me, inner darkness or no. My first day shipside I was dragged from my hammock and up on deck before I knew what was happening. Pedro presented me with a tar pot and caulking mallet and told me to hang myself over the side by a rope and caulk every crack I could reach. I looked at him dumbly through my haze and my grief. He threw a rope around my middle and cast me bodily overboard.

We were at full sail in a brisk wind, so I was dragged behind the ship thrashing and gasping for air for some time before Pedro pulled me back in. He pulled me up the side, scraping me painfully on the barnacles. Again he presented me, dripping and spluttering, with the tar pot. In my darkness, I opened my mouth to give voice to my thoughts. This time Pedro gave me a ringing box to the ear before hurling me again over the side.

My new cuts from the barnacles stung like flame in the salt water. I gasped for breath, struggling against our wake, and became very, very angry at this man. He knew nothing of my pain and loss! How could he! I wanted to kill him, and struck out for the boat with this intent. I had learned to swim well in the waves, so I gained very slowly, hauling myself through the water. Had I but known the future, I might not have wished so fervently for his untimely death.

Pedro grinned at me over the side and hauled me back up. I considered striking him with the tar pot, but decided that I did not need another sea bath on this day. So I gave him a savage glance and turned myself toward the side.

Crewman Armstrong, another half-breed like myself, showed me how to tie my rope tight and use a portion of it to lower myself over the side. His kindness saved me many beatings and I always thought of him as my one ally on the ship. Armstrong lived up to his name. He was a big man with a thick, curling beard knotted at the ends. Armstrong had very white teeth with one missing in front. If he smiled quickly it looked as if his mouth was winking at you.

I spent the rest of the day caulking and went to my hammock that night more tired and aching than I could possibly imagine. My fatigue was so great I felt no hunger, but Armstrong kept my hardtack, three hard dry sea biscuits, for me for the morning. He was right, and I ate in the morning as if starving.

By the third day I had caulked everything I could because the Albatross hung so low in the water. Her hold was only part full, and that had been further shrunken by our sleeping quarters and the Captain’s cabin. I do believe if she’d had a full cargo