The Ghost Inside: Sweeney Todd Fic
Author: Bitterfig
Title: The Ghost Inside
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Pairing: Johanna (Benjamin)/Anthony
Summary: Three years have passed since the events of Sweeney Todd. Passing as a boy, Johanna is now called Benjamin. She and Anthony are sailors together. When Anthony is accused of murdering the Captain of the vessel they’re sailing on it falls to Benjamin to save him.
Beta Reader: Fedink
Word Count: 4106
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence and sexuality.
Author’s Note: The lyrics to “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” and “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” are by the brilliant Stephen Sondheim.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any illegal acts taking place within that fiction are NOT condoned by the author. Depictions of any questionable, illegal, or potentially illegal activity in said fiction does not mean that I condone, promote, support, participate in, or approve of said activity. I grasp the distinction between fiction and reality and trust that readers will do the same. I do not profit from the fan fiction I write, and all rights to the characters remain firmly in the hands of their creator.
The Ghost Inside
The merchant vessel The Lovelorn Nellie was out on the Arctic Sea when a young sailor by the name of Anthony Hope was locked away for the murder of the ship’s Captain, Bartholomew York.
To most of those aboard it was a tragic and disconcerting incident. York was well loved with few exceptions and who would have imagined that the gentle and soft-spoken Anthony Hope was capable of murder?
Hope denied it himself, yet it seemed that he must have done the deed. Weren’t there witnesses who said so? With so much evidence no one could blame the First Mate, Charles Wallace, for clapping Hope in irons and making efforts to extract a confession.
Then as if it wasn’t bad enough to lose the Captain and have a fine lad revealed to be a bloodthirsty killer another mishap visited The Lovelorn Nellie.
Within days of Hope’s incarceration the first rumors of the ghost began to circulate among the men of the crew.
The first to hear her was a crusty old seadog who was known to drink. No one believed him when he said he had heard a woman singing. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen or heard something that wasn’t there.
Yet the following night she was heard again. This time by men who were steady and sober. And on it went, night after night until nearly every man on board, even the very respectable chaplain Reverend Moore, swore that they had heard her.
How could it be?
The Lovelorn Nellie was far out to sea. The men of her crew were seasoned sailors all, well acquainted with each other from past voyages. They knew each other. There was no woman among them, of this they were certain.
And yet each night they heard a woman’s voice singing old songs of love and murder.
It could only be a ghost.
They called her the Wayward Bride. The called her Lovelorn Nellie. They spoke of her at mess and at their work.
Of all the men on board there were only two who spoke not a word about the haunting. One was Charles Wallace, the First Mate and acting Captain. He said not a word about the Wayward Bride but after she appeared he seemed to grow pale as chalk and tense. He no longer seemed to sleep or eat. The seamen speculated that their ghost was haunting him, that it was him she sang for.
The other man who offered no opinion of who the ghost might be or what she wanted was Anthony Hope’s cousin, Benjamin. A scrawny boy who could climb the ropes like a monkey, Benjamin had never had much to say to anyone but Anthony. His silence regarding the singing woman surprised no one.
*****
After Anthony Hope made his confession, his cousin was allowed to visit him in the hold.
Anthony was in irons, stripped to the waist. His back was crisscrossed with bloody welts and his ribs stood out beneath his skin. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes glassy with fever.
“You confessed.” Benjamin said when they were quite alone. There was an edge of accusation to his voice. “You told them you slit the Captain’s throat and that you planned to grind him to mincemeat and serve him in mess.”
“Of course I confessed,” Anthony said. “I’ve been flogged every day; they gave me no food or water. I confessed all right. I told Wallace everything but the truth.”
Benjamin nodded somberly.
“So I surmised,” he said, “as I’m still being called Benjamin rather than Johanna.”
“About that, Ben, even down here I’ve heard talk of a phantom, a woman singing at night. Don’t think I haven’t heard of her. It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Who else would it be? How many girls gotten up as boys do you think are stowed on this boat?”
“I wasn’t sure,” Anthony admitted. “You always said you couldn’t bear being a girl, that you didn’t want to be Johanna anymore, so I thought it might not be you singing, that it might be a real ghost or demon siren.”
“There are no ghosts,” Benjamin said. “Nor demons. People are bad enough.”
“But why are you risking yourself like this, Ben? What are you doing?”
“I’m doing for you the only thing I can do, making my secret into a weapon and striking out. Tell me, Anthony, have you seen a change in our Mr. Wallace since you first heard of this ghost?”
Anthony nodded.
“His hands shake,” he said. “His face is so white you’d think he was a corpse, except that a vein in his forehead stands out like a chord and throbs with each heartbeat. But what does Mr. Wallace have to do with all this?”
“You’re too good-hearted, Anthony. Only you would ask that of a man who’s ordered you flogged and starved. You know you didn’t kill Captain York, who do you think did?”
“Surely not Mr. Wallace?’
“I’m sure Mr. Wallace didn’t kill Captain York himself anymore than he flogged you with his own hand, but I have no doubt that the Captain was killed because it pleased Mr. Wallace that he should die. It pleases him too that you should be flogged and that you should be hung. Of this I have no doubt.”
“If this is true, what good does it do to haunt the ship by night singing in your woman’s voice?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Benjamin said. “But I believe that by doing so I’m planting a seed, dropping a seed in Charles Wallace’s ear. My hope is that it will grow into a mighty tree that will crack open his brain. I know his guilt and since he seems to lack a conscience, I will be his conscience for him. I will haunt him and hound him so he knows what it is to live in fear. Perhaps he will break and everyone will see how wicked he truly is. If not, I’ll torture him the best I can, to pay him for what he’s done to you and then I’ll kill him. I have my razor.”
“You can’t do that,” Anthony protested. “You mustn’t. Wallace might be a bad man, a cruel and scheming man but do you have any proof that he killed Captain York? You could be mistaken; Mr. Wallace could be as innocent of murder as I am.”
“No one is as innocent as you, cousin,” Benjamin said. “Can you have any doubts, after what he’s done to you in the name of justice? I know what Mr. Wallace is. I recognized him the day we set sail. How could I not, it was one like him who raised me from a child.”
Anthony took the hand of his cousin Benjamin who was not really his cousin at all and had once been a girl that he loved. He remembered that day in London, three years before, when he had first laid eyes on Johanna Barker. She had been a lily-white maid with golden hair, a princess in a tower, a little bird caught in a cage.
What remained of that girl in this boy, Benjamin? Her fine, pale face was now tanned and rough from wind and water. Her long golden tresses were cropped short; her soft arms were hard and strong. Her eyes too were hard, her jaw set with grim resolve. She would not abandon him to his fate any more than he would have left her in that window. There was so much more to her than he had imagined.
“What are you thinking?” Benjamin asked.
“I was thinking of when I first saw you, singing in the window and how I have loved you since that moment.”
“You love me, but you’ve never known me. You never knew that girl in the window, what was in her heart. You don’t know the things I’ve seen or what I’m capable of. I didn’t want to know myself. I hoped to become someone else but I think I must love you back, Anthony. Because for your sake I return to that girl and the lessons she learned. For your sake I will be my father’s daughter.”
Anthony wondered which father she meant, the butcher barber who sired her or the criminal judge who raised her and tried to own her. Perhaps, he thought, she meant both.
*****
Three years before in London, Benjamin had been Johanna. Johanna with the long golden hair, the Judge’s ward, the pretty bird locked up on the madwoman’s ward. Anthony had managed to free her from cages within cages.
After they escaped the madhouse and Judge and the bizarre carnage at the Fleet Street pie shop, Anthony had brought Johanna to the docks disguised as a boy. He was due to ship out to Australia on The Lovelorn Nellie the very next day and he had begged Captain York to allow his “cousin” to come along.
“This isn’t a passenger vessel,” York had said eyeing Johanna’s slight frame. “Your cousin looks frail and girlish.”
“He was training with my uncle to be a legal clerk,” Anthony lied. “But my uncle has perished and now he’s no one in the world but me. Please sir, he’s only twelve. He’ll be sent to the poorhouse if I leave him here. He’s soft, but life at sea will harden him quickly. I don’t ask that you pay him or even feed him. Use my wages for his bed and board, only let us stay together.”
“I’ll not say no to a free pair of hands,” said York, who was a kind man though he pretended otherwise. “Bring your cousin along, teach him well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No thanks needed,” York said with a shrug. “It’s not costing me anything.”
And so they set sail.
At first, it was very hard for Johanna. She was frightened to be among men, she was cold and seasick and the ropes made her soft hands bleed. Still, she never complained and after a few weeks she grew stronger and surer.
Onboard the ship, Anthony and Johanna were always among others so they never spoke openly and were careful to act as cousins. Anthony assumed that when they had safely reached Australia they would marry and Johanna would once again live as a woman but when he finally had an opportunity to speak to her of these plans she shook her head.
“Don’t ask that of me,” she said. Her hand in his was firm and hard with calluses. “Don’t ask me to go back to being that weak thing, a toy to whatever man took a fancy to me.”
“It would be different,” Anthony assured her. “I love you.”
“The Judge loved me,” Johanna said coldly. “As he loved my mother. He would have destroyed me as he destroyed her, in the name of love. I won’t be an object of affection, I won’t be anyone’s beloved and I won’t be a weak and simpering girl again.”
“Will you leave me?”
Johanna shook her head.
“I don’t want to be without you. I do care for you,” she admitted as though it pained her. “Why can’t we go on as we are now? If you loved me for more than my yellow hair I would be your cousin, your brother, and your comrade. We could see the world together.”
He could not lose her and so he accepted her as cousin, brother and comrade.
She doffed her cap and before him cut off her long, golden hair. It fell into the ocean and was carried away. After that there was no more Johanna, only the boy Benjamin Hope.
From Australia they signed on to another ship bound to the orient. From Shangri they sailed to San Francisco. A year and a half had passed before they returned to England. They were eating dinner in a pub by the waterfront the first time they heard the song.
“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.
His skin was pale and his eye was odd.
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
who never thereafter were heard of again.
He trod a path that few have trod
did Sweeney Todd
the demon barber of Fleet Street.”
And so they learned for the first time the full story behind the baffling events that had brought them together but sent them fleeing.
“So that was my father,” Benjamin said and nothing more. They shipped out on the first boat that would have them, a freighter bound for America.
In New York Benjamin bought a silver razor.
Returning to England, the cousins sailed on The Lovelorn Nellie to Australia and back then signed on for the ship’s next voyage - an arctic passage.
Before the ship set sail, Captain York’s First Mate retired and a new man, Charles Wallace, was brought in.
The transition seemed smooth enough but like a deceitful ocean there were treacherous currents under the surface.
It was not that Wallace did poorly at his job. Quite the contrary, he was eminently competent to the point where he seemed sure that he knew the business of running the ship better than York. Just days after The Lovelorn Nellie left port he was already over-stepping himself, coming dangerously close to infringing on York’s command.
Nothing was said outright but tensions grew between the two men. Among the crew lines were drawn, sides taken. Wallace himself was crafty enough to maintain the appearance of propriety as he drew less upright men to himself. These men openly distained York’s authority and often clashed with the sailors who remained loyal to the Captain.
Though Anthony thought the world of Captain York, he and Benjamin were careful to avoid conflict. They couldn’t afford to make enemies or attract attention.
Yet one night, that was just what Anthony did.
It was snowing on the night in question, great clinging flakes that covered everything. It was a snow that seemed to blanket, to make warm rather than cold and many of the crew had gathered on the deck. Someone called for a song and Anthony’s name came up. Several men urged him on and finally, hesitantly he stepped forward and began to sing.
“Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
How can you jubilate
Sitting in cages,
Never taking wing?”
The sailors fell silent as he sang. There was only his voice and the sound of the waves. Benjamin found there were tears in his eyes and turned away. That was when he saw Mr. Wallace, standing separate, watching.
The First Mate was a tall, gaunt man in his forties. Not handsome, but a striking man. His dark hair was thin, showing the dome of his skull. His nose was prominent, Roman. His brows were heavy and under them were deep-set black eyes. Those eyes, Benjamin observed, were fixed on Anthony and seemed deep and dangerous as a pair of bottomless pits. Though Mr. Wallace stood silent and still, a vein stood out on his forehead as though there was some turmoil raging beneath the set mask of his face.
Benjamin shivered. There was something in that look that he knew too well.
“He wants Anthony,” the boy told himself. “He wants Anthony as the Judge wanted me, to have, to own, and to consume.”
Within the week, Captain York was dead and Anthony Hope was in irons.
*****
The night before Anthony was to be hung for the murder of Captain Bartholomew York, Benjamin Hope slipped into Mr. Wallace’s cabin and secreted himself behind a great sea chest. His silver razor was in his hand.
Benjamin was quite determined that he should slit Mr. Wallace’s throat. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure what he ought to do. Killing Mr. Wallace wouldn’t set Anthony free, though perhaps he could be released if Benjamin confessed to both murders. He would happily sacrifice himself for Anthony after he had his vengeance. Still, he would prefer not to die. He wasn’t even twenty years old and had been a prisoner most of his short life. He ought to live; he and Anthony ought to be together in their own particular way.
Benjamin thought of the father he had never known and the carnage he had left in his wake. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street had not bothered to separate the innocent from the guilty. They had all served to be served as meat pie.
Benjamin pressed the flat of the razor to his lips.
Why not kill everyone on the ship till there was no one left but he and Anthony on decks piled high with bodies. It made Benjamin dizzy just to think of it. It would begin with Wallace, and then he would kill them all.
Don’t.
He heard a voice, a whisper in his head. It was not the first time he had heard it. It was the same voice that told him to hide himself, to sing in the night with the voice he was born with rather than the man’s voice he affected.
This was something Benjamin had not told his cousin, that there really was a ghost. That there really was a wayward bride, a demon siren, a night mermaid. She came to Benjamin alone, she borrowed him, walked in him, guided him for a time.
Over the past three years, Benjamin Hope had made it his business to live on the surface of life, to feel nothing more than the wind and the sea spray, the ropes in his hands and the deck at his feet, hunger and fatigue and the release brought by food and sleep. For three years he had refused to look at the past or the future.
He could not say who the woman was who whispered in his ear. She may have been a phantom. She may have been Johanna with the long gold hair. Either way, she offered him solutions not contained in his way of thinking. In return she asked for the use of his body, the use of his voice.
“What would you have me do, lady?” Benjamin asked her in his mind.
Wait, she answered. Wait and see.
So he waited.
At last Mr. Wallace entered his cabin. Without lighting the lamp, he opened the sea chest Benjamin crouched behind and took out a bottle. He drank from it deeply then sank down into the chair of his small, high desk. He seemed deeply weary.
Sing for him, the lady said and Benjamin did as she asked.
He sang the song Johanna with the golden hair had sung looking out over London from the Judge’s window. He sang the song Anthony had sung the night he caught Mr. Wallace’s eye.
“Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird
Teach me how to sing.
If I can not fly…
Let me sing.”
As he sang, Benjamin expected Mr. Wallace to rise from his seat, push the trunk aside and reveal the trespasser in his room. He didn’t, instead he rested his head in his hands and remained very still.
“Amelia, is that you?” Mr. Wallace asked without looking around him. Benjamin did not respond, he only sang on. “What do you want from me, Amelia? Why have you come to me now?”
“You said you loved me,” Benjamin answered. Somehow he knew what to say, unprompted by the lady. “You told me I was special to you.”
“You were, Amelia. You are. You were so beautiful, and for a moment I held your life in my hands. I’ll never forget your voice as you cried out, the way your hair blew as you fell into the sea but I’ve put aside those desires. I move among men now, I captain a ship. I’m not ruled by those passions any more.”
“So there was never anyone but me?”
“Never, Amelia.”
“What about the boy?”
“The boy is a murderer. Justice must be served.”
“You might lie to yourself Charles, but you can’t lie to me. The boy moved you, as I once did.”
“His voice… such a beautiful voice. So pure… What did he ever do to deserve a voice like that? I couldn’t help myself…”
“You had to have him, as you had to have me. The ship’s captain died for your ambition but the boy will die for the disease in you. The same disease that killed me.”
“I’m sorry, Amelia. I meant for it to end with you...”
Go to him, the lady ordered. Be Amelia for him.
Benjamin recoiled. It was bad enough to be her voice, but the idea of embodying this woman, this victim, was repulsive to him. He had been a woman once, and helpless. He had vowed he would never again be so weak. He was a boy now, he was free.
Not free, hiding, crippled with fear. Be truly brave, the lady whispered.
Benjamin shook his head.
Turn your weakness into your weapon, sharper than any razor.
“I can’t.”
Do it for Anthony, he did it for you. Even after what the Judge did to him, he still came back for you.
“If I did this for Anthony, it would mean I loved him.”
Then you love him.
“Love frightens me.”
Only by becoming what you fear the most can you overcome fear.
Johanna rose to her feet, stepped out from behind the trunk. In the darkness she sought out Mr. Wallace, she laid her hands lightly upon his shoulders.
“Oh, you evil and upright man,” she breathed.
“What do you want from me?” He asked.
“The same thing you asked of the boy,” she said. “Give me your confession, Charles. Write your sins for all to see and I’ll take away your pain.”
He reached out, caught her around the waist and pulled her to him. She did not shudder at his touch. Even when he kissed her, she yielded to him. His lips were salty from the ocean air. His mouth was smooth and cold, tasting of cognac. As they kissed, his fingers closed around her neck.
“You take things that are good like love and pride and you twist them, Charles.” Johanna said stroking his sparse hair. “Give me your confession and it will all end tonight.”
He picked up the pen and began to write, dark as it was. In the moonlight, Johanna could just read his words. In simple words, unembellished, he told how he had ordered York’s murder. He named those who had committed it, the same men who bore witness against Anthony Hope. He finished and signed his name.
“This is what I did,” he said. “No need to tell them why. You have your justice, spirit. Now take your vengeance.”
Johanna handed him the razor.
*****
The day Anthony Hope was to be hung, the acting Captain Charles Wallace was found in his cabin with an empty bottle of cognac beside him. In one hand was a signed confession, in the other a silver razor. His throat was slit from side to side.
Anthony Hope was set free but he was ill and it was several days before his cousin Benjamin was allowed to see him.
When they were finally reunited, Benjamin noticed that Anthony walked unsteadily. His cheekbones stood out and his hair was lank but his eyes were no longer bright with fever. He was weak but he would grow stronger. He would heal, he would live.
They went to a secluded part of the deck where the others could not hear them.
“Thank you,” Anthony said.
“Thank Johanna,” Benjamin replied. “I thought she was useless, a cringing little flower but she was the one who saved you. She was afraid, but she did what she had to. It turns out she was braver than I’d ever imagined. In the end she… I… even pitied him…”
“Johanna was a wonder,” Anthony said looking out into the waves.
“I thought I was done with her,” Benjamin said. “I wanted to be done with her but she’s still here, still inside me and that part of me… there’s strength in it. Strength I need. I’m Benjamin now, but I’m still Johanna. I don’t know what it all means. Do you?”
“I don’t,” Anthony admitted. “But I want to be with you whoever you are. I want to see who you become.”
“Is that what you mean when you say you love me?”
“I think it is.”
“Then maybe love isn’t so terrible after all.”
Benjamin slipped his small, weathered hand into Anthony’s and they stood silent on the deck letting the lapping waves sing to them.
Title: The Ghost Inside
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Pairing: Johanna (Benjamin)/Anthony
Summary: Three years have passed since the events of Sweeney Todd. Passing as a boy, Johanna is now called Benjamin. She and Anthony are sailors together. When Anthony is accused of murdering the Captain of the vessel they’re sailing on it falls to Benjamin to save him.
Beta Reader: Fedink
Word Count: 4106
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence and sexuality.
Author’s Note: The lyrics to “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” and “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” are by the brilliant Stephen Sondheim.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any illegal acts taking place within that fiction are NOT condoned by the author. Depictions of any questionable, illegal, or potentially illegal activity in said fiction does not mean that I condone, promote, support, participate in, or approve of said activity. I grasp the distinction between fiction and reality and trust that readers will do the same. I do not profit from the fan fiction I write, and all rights to the characters remain firmly in the hands of their creator.
The Ghost Inside
The merchant vessel The Lovelorn Nellie was out on the Arctic Sea when a young sailor by the name of Anthony Hope was locked away for the murder of the ship’s Captain, Bartholomew York.
To most of those aboard it was a tragic and disconcerting incident. York was well loved with few exceptions and who would have imagined that the gentle and soft-spoken Anthony Hope was capable of murder?
Hope denied it himself, yet it seemed that he must have done the deed. Weren’t there witnesses who said so? With so much evidence no one could blame the First Mate, Charles Wallace, for clapping Hope in irons and making efforts to extract a confession.
Then as if it wasn’t bad enough to lose the Captain and have a fine lad revealed to be a bloodthirsty killer another mishap visited The Lovelorn Nellie.
Within days of Hope’s incarceration the first rumors of the ghost began to circulate among the men of the crew.
The first to hear her was a crusty old seadog who was known to drink. No one believed him when he said he had heard a woman singing. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen or heard something that wasn’t there.
Yet the following night she was heard again. This time by men who were steady and sober. And on it went, night after night until nearly every man on board, even the very respectable chaplain Reverend Moore, swore that they had heard her.
How could it be?
The Lovelorn Nellie was far out to sea. The men of her crew were seasoned sailors all, well acquainted with each other from past voyages. They knew each other. There was no woman among them, of this they were certain.
And yet each night they heard a woman’s voice singing old songs of love and murder.
It could only be a ghost.
They called her the Wayward Bride. The called her Lovelorn Nellie. They spoke of her at mess and at their work.
Of all the men on board there were only two who spoke not a word about the haunting. One was Charles Wallace, the First Mate and acting Captain. He said not a word about the Wayward Bride but after she appeared he seemed to grow pale as chalk and tense. He no longer seemed to sleep or eat. The seamen speculated that their ghost was haunting him, that it was him she sang for.
The other man who offered no opinion of who the ghost might be or what she wanted was Anthony Hope’s cousin, Benjamin. A scrawny boy who could climb the ropes like a monkey, Benjamin had never had much to say to anyone but Anthony. His silence regarding the singing woman surprised no one.
*****
After Anthony Hope made his confession, his cousin was allowed to visit him in the hold.
Anthony was in irons, stripped to the waist. His back was crisscrossed with bloody welts and his ribs stood out beneath his skin. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes glassy with fever.
“You confessed.” Benjamin said when they were quite alone. There was an edge of accusation to his voice. “You told them you slit the Captain’s throat and that you planned to grind him to mincemeat and serve him in mess.”
“Of course I confessed,” Anthony said. “I’ve been flogged every day; they gave me no food or water. I confessed all right. I told Wallace everything but the truth.”
Benjamin nodded somberly.
“So I surmised,” he said, “as I’m still being called Benjamin rather than Johanna.”
“About that, Ben, even down here I’ve heard talk of a phantom, a woman singing at night. Don’t think I haven’t heard of her. It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Who else would it be? How many girls gotten up as boys do you think are stowed on this boat?”
“I wasn’t sure,” Anthony admitted. “You always said you couldn’t bear being a girl, that you didn’t want to be Johanna anymore, so I thought it might not be you singing, that it might be a real ghost or demon siren.”
“There are no ghosts,” Benjamin said. “Nor demons. People are bad enough.”
“But why are you risking yourself like this, Ben? What are you doing?”
“I’m doing for you the only thing I can do, making my secret into a weapon and striking out. Tell me, Anthony, have you seen a change in our Mr. Wallace since you first heard of this ghost?”
Anthony nodded.
“His hands shake,” he said. “His face is so white you’d think he was a corpse, except that a vein in his forehead stands out like a chord and throbs with each heartbeat. But what does Mr. Wallace have to do with all this?”
“You’re too good-hearted, Anthony. Only you would ask that of a man who’s ordered you flogged and starved. You know you didn’t kill Captain York, who do you think did?”
“Surely not Mr. Wallace?’
“I’m sure Mr. Wallace didn’t kill Captain York himself anymore than he flogged you with his own hand, but I have no doubt that the Captain was killed because it pleased Mr. Wallace that he should die. It pleases him too that you should be flogged and that you should be hung. Of this I have no doubt.”
“If this is true, what good does it do to haunt the ship by night singing in your woman’s voice?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Benjamin said. “But I believe that by doing so I’m planting a seed, dropping a seed in Charles Wallace’s ear. My hope is that it will grow into a mighty tree that will crack open his brain. I know his guilt and since he seems to lack a conscience, I will be his conscience for him. I will haunt him and hound him so he knows what it is to live in fear. Perhaps he will break and everyone will see how wicked he truly is. If not, I’ll torture him the best I can, to pay him for what he’s done to you and then I’ll kill him. I have my razor.”
“You can’t do that,” Anthony protested. “You mustn’t. Wallace might be a bad man, a cruel and scheming man but do you have any proof that he killed Captain York? You could be mistaken; Mr. Wallace could be as innocent of murder as I am.”
“No one is as innocent as you, cousin,” Benjamin said. “Can you have any doubts, after what he’s done to you in the name of justice? I know what Mr. Wallace is. I recognized him the day we set sail. How could I not, it was one like him who raised me from a child.”
Anthony took the hand of his cousin Benjamin who was not really his cousin at all and had once been a girl that he loved. He remembered that day in London, three years before, when he had first laid eyes on Johanna Barker. She had been a lily-white maid with golden hair, a princess in a tower, a little bird caught in a cage.
What remained of that girl in this boy, Benjamin? Her fine, pale face was now tanned and rough from wind and water. Her long golden tresses were cropped short; her soft arms were hard and strong. Her eyes too were hard, her jaw set with grim resolve. She would not abandon him to his fate any more than he would have left her in that window. There was so much more to her than he had imagined.
“What are you thinking?” Benjamin asked.
“I was thinking of when I first saw you, singing in the window and how I have loved you since that moment.”
“You love me, but you’ve never known me. You never knew that girl in the window, what was in her heart. You don’t know the things I’ve seen or what I’m capable of. I didn’t want to know myself. I hoped to become someone else but I think I must love you back, Anthony. Because for your sake I return to that girl and the lessons she learned. For your sake I will be my father’s daughter.”
Anthony wondered which father she meant, the butcher barber who sired her or the criminal judge who raised her and tried to own her. Perhaps, he thought, she meant both.
*****
Three years before in London, Benjamin had been Johanna. Johanna with the long golden hair, the Judge’s ward, the pretty bird locked up on the madwoman’s ward. Anthony had managed to free her from cages within cages.
After they escaped the madhouse and Judge and the bizarre carnage at the Fleet Street pie shop, Anthony had brought Johanna to the docks disguised as a boy. He was due to ship out to Australia on The Lovelorn Nellie the very next day and he had begged Captain York to allow his “cousin” to come along.
“This isn’t a passenger vessel,” York had said eyeing Johanna’s slight frame. “Your cousin looks frail and girlish.”
“He was training with my uncle to be a legal clerk,” Anthony lied. “But my uncle has perished and now he’s no one in the world but me. Please sir, he’s only twelve. He’ll be sent to the poorhouse if I leave him here. He’s soft, but life at sea will harden him quickly. I don’t ask that you pay him or even feed him. Use my wages for his bed and board, only let us stay together.”
“I’ll not say no to a free pair of hands,” said York, who was a kind man though he pretended otherwise. “Bring your cousin along, teach him well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No thanks needed,” York said with a shrug. “It’s not costing me anything.”
And so they set sail.
At first, it was very hard for Johanna. She was frightened to be among men, she was cold and seasick and the ropes made her soft hands bleed. Still, she never complained and after a few weeks she grew stronger and surer.
Onboard the ship, Anthony and Johanna were always among others so they never spoke openly and were careful to act as cousins. Anthony assumed that when they had safely reached Australia they would marry and Johanna would once again live as a woman but when he finally had an opportunity to speak to her of these plans she shook her head.
“Don’t ask that of me,” she said. Her hand in his was firm and hard with calluses. “Don’t ask me to go back to being that weak thing, a toy to whatever man took a fancy to me.”
“It would be different,” Anthony assured her. “I love you.”
“The Judge loved me,” Johanna said coldly. “As he loved my mother. He would have destroyed me as he destroyed her, in the name of love. I won’t be an object of affection, I won’t be anyone’s beloved and I won’t be a weak and simpering girl again.”
“Will you leave me?”
Johanna shook her head.
“I don’t want to be without you. I do care for you,” she admitted as though it pained her. “Why can’t we go on as we are now? If you loved me for more than my yellow hair I would be your cousin, your brother, and your comrade. We could see the world together.”
He could not lose her and so he accepted her as cousin, brother and comrade.
She doffed her cap and before him cut off her long, golden hair. It fell into the ocean and was carried away. After that there was no more Johanna, only the boy Benjamin Hope.
From Australia they signed on to another ship bound to the orient. From Shangri they sailed to San Francisco. A year and a half had passed before they returned to England. They were eating dinner in a pub by the waterfront the first time they heard the song.
“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.
His skin was pale and his eye was odd.
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
who never thereafter were heard of again.
He trod a path that few have trod
did Sweeney Todd
the demon barber of Fleet Street.”
And so they learned for the first time the full story behind the baffling events that had brought them together but sent them fleeing.
“So that was my father,” Benjamin said and nothing more. They shipped out on the first boat that would have them, a freighter bound for America.
In New York Benjamin bought a silver razor.
Returning to England, the cousins sailed on The Lovelorn Nellie to Australia and back then signed on for the ship’s next voyage - an arctic passage.
Before the ship set sail, Captain York’s First Mate retired and a new man, Charles Wallace, was brought in.
The transition seemed smooth enough but like a deceitful ocean there were treacherous currents under the surface.
It was not that Wallace did poorly at his job. Quite the contrary, he was eminently competent to the point where he seemed sure that he knew the business of running the ship better than York. Just days after The Lovelorn Nellie left port he was already over-stepping himself, coming dangerously close to infringing on York’s command.
Nothing was said outright but tensions grew between the two men. Among the crew lines were drawn, sides taken. Wallace himself was crafty enough to maintain the appearance of propriety as he drew less upright men to himself. These men openly distained York’s authority and often clashed with the sailors who remained loyal to the Captain.
Though Anthony thought the world of Captain York, he and Benjamin were careful to avoid conflict. They couldn’t afford to make enemies or attract attention.
Yet one night, that was just what Anthony did.
It was snowing on the night in question, great clinging flakes that covered everything. It was a snow that seemed to blanket, to make warm rather than cold and many of the crew had gathered on the deck. Someone called for a song and Anthony’s name came up. Several men urged him on and finally, hesitantly he stepped forward and began to sing.
“Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
How can you jubilate
Sitting in cages,
Never taking wing?”
The sailors fell silent as he sang. There was only his voice and the sound of the waves. Benjamin found there were tears in his eyes and turned away. That was when he saw Mr. Wallace, standing separate, watching.
The First Mate was a tall, gaunt man in his forties. Not handsome, but a striking man. His dark hair was thin, showing the dome of his skull. His nose was prominent, Roman. His brows were heavy and under them were deep-set black eyes. Those eyes, Benjamin observed, were fixed on Anthony and seemed deep and dangerous as a pair of bottomless pits. Though Mr. Wallace stood silent and still, a vein stood out on his forehead as though there was some turmoil raging beneath the set mask of his face.
Benjamin shivered. There was something in that look that he knew too well.
“He wants Anthony,” the boy told himself. “He wants Anthony as the Judge wanted me, to have, to own, and to consume.”
Within the week, Captain York was dead and Anthony Hope was in irons.
*****
The night before Anthony was to be hung for the murder of Captain Bartholomew York, Benjamin Hope slipped into Mr. Wallace’s cabin and secreted himself behind a great sea chest. His silver razor was in his hand.
Benjamin was quite determined that he should slit Mr. Wallace’s throat. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure what he ought to do. Killing Mr. Wallace wouldn’t set Anthony free, though perhaps he could be released if Benjamin confessed to both murders. He would happily sacrifice himself for Anthony after he had his vengeance. Still, he would prefer not to die. He wasn’t even twenty years old and had been a prisoner most of his short life. He ought to live; he and Anthony ought to be together in their own particular way.
Benjamin thought of the father he had never known and the carnage he had left in his wake. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street had not bothered to separate the innocent from the guilty. They had all served to be served as meat pie.
Benjamin pressed the flat of the razor to his lips.
Why not kill everyone on the ship till there was no one left but he and Anthony on decks piled high with bodies. It made Benjamin dizzy just to think of it. It would begin with Wallace, and then he would kill them all.
Don’t.
He heard a voice, a whisper in his head. It was not the first time he had heard it. It was the same voice that told him to hide himself, to sing in the night with the voice he was born with rather than the man’s voice he affected.
This was something Benjamin had not told his cousin, that there really was a ghost. That there really was a wayward bride, a demon siren, a night mermaid. She came to Benjamin alone, she borrowed him, walked in him, guided him for a time.
Over the past three years, Benjamin Hope had made it his business to live on the surface of life, to feel nothing more than the wind and the sea spray, the ropes in his hands and the deck at his feet, hunger and fatigue and the release brought by food and sleep. For three years he had refused to look at the past or the future.
He could not say who the woman was who whispered in his ear. She may have been a phantom. She may have been Johanna with the long gold hair. Either way, she offered him solutions not contained in his way of thinking. In return she asked for the use of his body, the use of his voice.
“What would you have me do, lady?” Benjamin asked her in his mind.
Wait, she answered. Wait and see.
So he waited.
At last Mr. Wallace entered his cabin. Without lighting the lamp, he opened the sea chest Benjamin crouched behind and took out a bottle. He drank from it deeply then sank down into the chair of his small, high desk. He seemed deeply weary.
Sing for him, the lady said and Benjamin did as she asked.
He sang the song Johanna with the golden hair had sung looking out over London from the Judge’s window. He sang the song Anthony had sung the night he caught Mr. Wallace’s eye.
“Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird
Teach me how to sing.
If I can not fly…
Let me sing.”
As he sang, Benjamin expected Mr. Wallace to rise from his seat, push the trunk aside and reveal the trespasser in his room. He didn’t, instead he rested his head in his hands and remained very still.
“Amelia, is that you?” Mr. Wallace asked without looking around him. Benjamin did not respond, he only sang on. “What do you want from me, Amelia? Why have you come to me now?”
“You said you loved me,” Benjamin answered. Somehow he knew what to say, unprompted by the lady. “You told me I was special to you.”
“You were, Amelia. You are. You were so beautiful, and for a moment I held your life in my hands. I’ll never forget your voice as you cried out, the way your hair blew as you fell into the sea but I’ve put aside those desires. I move among men now, I captain a ship. I’m not ruled by those passions any more.”
“So there was never anyone but me?”
“Never, Amelia.”
“What about the boy?”
“The boy is a murderer. Justice must be served.”
“You might lie to yourself Charles, but you can’t lie to me. The boy moved you, as I once did.”
“His voice… such a beautiful voice. So pure… What did he ever do to deserve a voice like that? I couldn’t help myself…”
“You had to have him, as you had to have me. The ship’s captain died for your ambition but the boy will die for the disease in you. The same disease that killed me.”
“I’m sorry, Amelia. I meant for it to end with you...”
Go to him, the lady ordered. Be Amelia for him.
Benjamin recoiled. It was bad enough to be her voice, but the idea of embodying this woman, this victim, was repulsive to him. He had been a woman once, and helpless. He had vowed he would never again be so weak. He was a boy now, he was free.
Not free, hiding, crippled with fear. Be truly brave, the lady whispered.
Benjamin shook his head.
Turn your weakness into your weapon, sharper than any razor.
“I can’t.”
Do it for Anthony, he did it for you. Even after what the Judge did to him, he still came back for you.
“If I did this for Anthony, it would mean I loved him.”
Then you love him.
“Love frightens me.”
Only by becoming what you fear the most can you overcome fear.
Johanna rose to her feet, stepped out from behind the trunk. In the darkness she sought out Mr. Wallace, she laid her hands lightly upon his shoulders.
“Oh, you evil and upright man,” she breathed.
“What do you want from me?” He asked.
“The same thing you asked of the boy,” she said. “Give me your confession, Charles. Write your sins for all to see and I’ll take away your pain.”
He reached out, caught her around the waist and pulled her to him. She did not shudder at his touch. Even when he kissed her, she yielded to him. His lips were salty from the ocean air. His mouth was smooth and cold, tasting of cognac. As they kissed, his fingers closed around her neck.
“You take things that are good like love and pride and you twist them, Charles.” Johanna said stroking his sparse hair. “Give me your confession and it will all end tonight.”
He picked up the pen and began to write, dark as it was. In the moonlight, Johanna could just read his words. In simple words, unembellished, he told how he had ordered York’s murder. He named those who had committed it, the same men who bore witness against Anthony Hope. He finished and signed his name.
“This is what I did,” he said. “No need to tell them why. You have your justice, spirit. Now take your vengeance.”
Johanna handed him the razor.
*****
The day Anthony Hope was to be hung, the acting Captain Charles Wallace was found in his cabin with an empty bottle of cognac beside him. In one hand was a signed confession, in the other a silver razor. His throat was slit from side to side.
Anthony Hope was set free but he was ill and it was several days before his cousin Benjamin was allowed to see him.
When they were finally reunited, Benjamin noticed that Anthony walked unsteadily. His cheekbones stood out and his hair was lank but his eyes were no longer bright with fever. He was weak but he would grow stronger. He would heal, he would live.
They went to a secluded part of the deck where the others could not hear them.
“Thank you,” Anthony said.
“Thank Johanna,” Benjamin replied. “I thought she was useless, a cringing little flower but she was the one who saved you. She was afraid, but she did what she had to. It turns out she was braver than I’d ever imagined. In the end she… I… even pitied him…”
“Johanna was a wonder,” Anthony said looking out into the waves.
“I thought I was done with her,” Benjamin said. “I wanted to be done with her but she’s still here, still inside me and that part of me… there’s strength in it. Strength I need. I’m Benjamin now, but I’m still Johanna. I don’t know what it all means. Do you?”
“I don’t,” Anthony admitted. “But I want to be with you whoever you are. I want to see who you become.”
“Is that what you mean when you say you love me?”
“I think it is.”
“Then maybe love isn’t so terrible after all.”
Benjamin slipped his small, weathered hand into Anthony’s and they stood silent on the deck letting the lapping waves sing to them.