Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [15]
On the day after the Cynthia disaster, Nemo had awakened at dawn to find a small basket wedged against his doorstep, a package that contained hard bread, cheese, boiled eggs, and flowers. Even without smelling the faint trace of her perfume, he knew that Caroline Aronnax had stolen these items from her family’s kitchen and sent her maidservant Marie out through the midnight streets to deliver it, unseen.
“I will talk to my father, André,” she had written in a note tucked into the basket. “Perhaps I can help.”
Nemo felt a lump in his throat. She had kept secret her friendship with the streetwise young man, much as she had hidden her own musical compositions. Nemo could not ask Monsieur Aronnax for work in his shipping offices, or even at one of the local docks, unloading and inventorying cargoes arrived from far-off lands. He had to find some other way to pay his living expenses.
Breathing hard with resentment, he used a rock and a long chisel to smash away the padlock that secured his father’s sea trunk. He didn’t know where the key might be, since he hadn’t seen his father open the chest in years.
Nemo rummaged through the documents and keepsakes, found an old engraving of his mysterious, dusky-skinned mother. The chest also contained dried flowers, a book written in a language he couldn’t read, a set of cups, a dusty bottle of wine that Jacques must have kept for some anticipated celebration he would now never witness. Perhaps his son’s marriage? Nemo couldn’t venture a guess. And hidden behind the false back of one divider in the trunk, he discovered a handful of coins.
The next day, by selling some of the trinkets to a vendor of eccentric items, Nemo scraped together enough money to have a funeral Mass read for his father at the Church of St. Martin, along with those of the others who had lost their lives aboard the Cynthia. Hearing the priest speak Jacques’ name aloud, though, Nemo felt no particular honor, no special consolation.
Neither he nor his father were devout Catholics, but sometimes, when a teary-eyed Jacques had had too much wine or just seemed sad with life, he would recall the promise he’d made to Nemo’s mother on her deathbed, that he would give her boy a proper upbringing. . . .
Alone in the empty room, Nemo slept on a straw-stuffed tick that served as a mattress. He continued, one day at a time, not looking beyond the following morning . . . until he realized he had to plan for his future. Nemo always had plans, but they were too many and too unrealistic. Now he didn’t know what he would do.
Four days after the disaster, the squint-eyed landlord and a pair of burly companions burst through the door without knocking. Nemo sat at the rickety table on which he ate and where he had learned his letters and arithmetic. The two hirelings stood together, a barricade of muscle and flesh.
The landlord stepped forward, a small-statured man with one eye larger than the other. His seamed face displayed a heartfelt sorrow, belied by his stern voice. “You’ll have to move out, boy. Got no choice. Sorry.” The landlord frowned at the two toughs, as if dismayed by the necessity of bringing them along. “And I’ll take any possessions as part of the payment for which your father was in arrears.”
Nemo, though, would not be bluffed. “How could my father be in arrears? You’re lying.” He stood up from the table, arms loose at his sides, ready to throw himself on the thugs if they harassed him. “He had a job. He paid you every month.”
“No, he promised to pay me every month. He was two months behind.” The landlord’s drooping eye squinted, and he shook his head sadly. “I gave him credit because I knew he’d get a bonus when the Cynthia was christened.”
“And dead men don’t get paid,” one of the hirelings said.
The landlord nodded.