Treasures of the Deep Page 3

  Faustus, standing by as always, bent and stiff on his wooden leg, noted gloomily, ‘The boy will have to get used to that, with a sea captain as a father.’

  ‘I suppose he will,’ pondered Chloe.

  But Augustin’s grandfather was not so sanguine on the matter. Upon hearing that Vincente was to return to sea, King Ferdinand demanded that Chloe and Augustin come home to Coris in the meantime. No grandson of his was going to spend his second birthday alone among the Valignano barbarians. Indeed, without even waiting for his daughter’s answer, he dispatched his flagship and two escorting frigates to collect her.

  ‘And if I refuse to board,’ the amused Chloe told her husband, ‘no doubt they’ll open fire on the town and lay siege until I surrender.’

  Vincente laughed, bouncing his son on his knee. ‘There’s no need for it to come to that. By all means stay with your father while I’m away. Only be home again in plenty of time. After six months without you two, I won’t want to come home to an empty house.’

  ‘We’ll be here. It’s you I’ll be worried about. Promise me you’ll be careful out there.’

  ‘On a New Island run? I’ll be fine.’

  But Faustus, watching on, had gone pale and was shaking his head to himself. He said nothing, but went away and sat a while in troubled thought. An hour later he was back again to address his master and mistress gravely. ‘A foreboding is upon me. Your voyage to New Island, Captain, will not be as plain sailing as you seem to think – and I fear that you will not return at all.’

  Chloe blanched. ‘Then you must not go!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ responded Vincente, glaring at the scapegoat. ‘How dare you distress your mistress in such a way. There’s nothing to fear.’

  ‘I know only what I know, sir.’

  ‘Husband,’ declared Chloe suddenly, her eyes lighting with an idea, ‘you have not yet appointed a scapegoat to the Vanquish, isn’t that so?’

  Vincente, in truth, had always considered the scapegoat tradition something of a nuisance – though he knew too that most seaman were more superstitious than he, and would not dream of sailing without one. ‘No … it’s a last detail I’d not yet attended to.’

  ‘Then the solution is simple. If Faustus thinks you are in danger, who better to protect you than Faustus himself! Has he not always protected me?’

  Now it was the scapegoat’s turn to blanche. ‘But I was never to leave your side, my Lady!’

  Vincente laughed grimly. ‘Snared in your own net, scapegoat. Very well then,’ he added to his wife, ‘if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll take him along, and see what kind of sailor I can fashion out of him.’

  And so it went. Vincente delayed only long enough to see his wife and child off on the Castille ships, then cast off himself, with the reluctant Faustus installed, for this one voyage at least, as the Vanquish’s scapegoat. At the mouth of the bay they rendezvoused with the eleven merchantmen of the tribute fleet and with the two frigates who were the assistant escorts; then together the fourteen ships made sail almost directly west for New Island.

  Vincente had not, even for moment, taken the scapegoat’s warning seriously, but in fact the crossing did indeed prove to be far tougher than he’d expected. Spring was normally a placid season in such middle latitudes, but that year winter stayed late, and the fleet was battered by storm after storm. The novice captain had a difficult enough time keeping his own ship afloat, let alone holding the entire fleet together and on course.

  The only light relief in all the tumult and gales was that Faustus was desperately seasick the entire time, to Vincente’s somewhat cruel satisfaction. No wonder the man had not wanted to come along!

  But the fleet endured in one piece, and at last the great headlands of New Island’s famous bay, the Claw, reared over the horizon. An immense pride stirred in Vincente at the sight; his first voyage as captain was over, and he had conquered the sea and the worst it could throw at him. In his joy – and to suitably impress the New Islanders, who he knew would be watching – he ordered broadsides to be fired off on either flank, before sailing serenely through the Rip to the Stone Port gates.

  There were no further troubles after that. The loading of the tribute fleet went smoothly, and the return voyage, in fine summer weather, was uneventful, if somewhat slow. Six months after setting out, the Vanquish and the tribute fleet reached the familiar waters west of Great Island, where the various ships dispersed to their home ports.

  It was early autumn by then, and Vincente steered his own course back to Haven Diaz. He was greeted by a town that was strangely silent, and draped in black – black sheets hanging from balconies, black streamers suspended from lampposts, black banners flying from flagpoles.

  He could guess what it must be. King Benefice – old and unwell – must have died while they were away, leaving his son Benito to assume the throne, and the town to mourn the death of their monarch.

  But when the Vanquish docked and Vincente hurried ashore he was surprised to find King Benefice himself there to greet him, alive and well, but grim-faced with grim news. There had indeed been a royal death, but not of any king. Instead, it was Vincente’s own wife and son, Chloe and Augustin, who were dead.

  Dead? Vincente could only stare, uncomprehending. His wife and son were dead?

  They had drowned, Benefice explained. The Castille flagship – the Dauntless, it was called – had been bringing them home from Coris when it sank with nearly all hands lost. It was only two weeks ago …

  And still Vincente could only stare. The Castille flagship – that kingdom’s finest, greatest vessel – had sunk, on the mere three-day voyage between Coris and Haven Diaz? And two weeks ago? But that was the very day of his son’s second birthday, the day too of his and Chloe’s wedding anniversary. It was impossible!

  King Benefice only nodded remorselessly. It was true. The facts had been gathered from the few survivors of the disaster. It happened on the flagship’s first evening out; Chloe and Augustin had celebrated his birthday with his grandfather that morning before embarking, and by nightfall the Dauntlessand its two companion frigates had reached the mouth of the Gulf of Coris.

  There were known reefs in the area, but warning bonfires were always kept burning on the shoreline, and by taking bearings from the fires a safe route could easily be conned, even in darkness. When a sudden fogbank slid across the water the two frigates – having lost sight of the fires – eased sail until the fog should pass, and it did so within the hour. But when the air was clear again, the two frigates found themselves alone.

  The Dauntless was gone.

  A frantic search ensued, but it wasn’t until dawn that a few fragments of wreckage were found, with barely a dozen sailors clinging on, wretched and half drowned, out of all the six hundred on board.

  These men reported that the Dauntless had not eased sail when the fog came – for the mist was low on the water, and from the flagship’s high deck, so much taller than those of the frigates, the warning fires could still be seen. Or so it was at first, but then the fog had swirled oddly, and the officer on duty must have taken bearings from the wrong fire, for without warning the ship ran hard upon an unseen reef, ripping its side open. The lower decks flooded quickly, and within a few terrifying minutes the Dauntless – top-heavy with its grand and gold-gilded stern castle – had capsized. It sank in deep water a hundred yards beyond the reef, and no one, other than a few of those who’d been on deck, had any chance to escape.

  And still Vincente only stared. His wife and infant son, entombed forever in the cold darkness. His wife and son, taken from him in calm seas by an accident so preventable and idiotic as to be laughable.

  Ah – but the joke was on him. For was he not the man who had conquered the sea and everything it could throw at him? Such he had thought in his pride and foolishness, upon arrival at Stone Port, firing off his broadsides in vain celebration. And all the while the sea had been mocking him; waiting to snatch away – randomly, meaninglessly –
the two people he held dearest.

  It was as if fate itself had conspired to teach him a lesson. Why, Chloe had even sent Faustus from her side, the very scapegoat who was meant to defend her. The old man had come away to sea to protect Vincente, who it turned out had not needed protecting at all. Chloe and Augustin were the ones who had needed it …

  If only scapegoats could really foretell, thought Vincente numbly. If only Faustus himself had known, and spoken out in time. If only the scapegoat had seen the terrible future that lay ahead.

  If only –

  It came then, as Vincente stood motionless – a stab of suspicion almost too awful to believe.

  Faustus had known.

  Vincente remembered it now in inarguable clarity; on that day six months before, when Chloe had agreed to sail home to Coris, the scapegoat had become unaccountably disturbed. He’d claimed that he’d had a foreboding, that he feared for Vincente’s crossing to New Island. But that had been a lie. Instead, in some evil vision, the old man must have beheld the Castille flagship sinking, taking Chloe and Augustin with it – and Faustus too, if he was with them, as he should have been. And so to save himself – craven, cunning – he’d concocted his treacherous prophecy, so that Chloe would insist her scapegoat go with her husband, rather than remain at her side.

  And now, finally, Vincente did move.

  Back on board his ship he stormed, and up to the high deck, where Faustus stood waiting. One look at Vincente told the old man that his secret was uncovered. ‘Forgive me, master!’ he cried. ‘I was afraid!’

  But Vincente, his face black, only took violent hold of the scapegoat and, raising the frail figure high above his head, strode to the seaward rail. ‘Drowned you should have been with them, faithless protector,’ he pronounced terribly, ‘and drowned you shall be now!’

  And with that he hurled Faustus from the high deck. Wailing, the scapegoat hit the waters of the harbour with a deathly splash – and never rose again, though whether it was the fall that killed him, or Vincente’s curse, none could ever say, for his body was never found.

  Vincente looked darkly upon scapegoats ever afterwards.

  He appointed one to replace Faustus, but only because tradition demanded it, and he was careful to choose a stolid, silent old woman with an accidentally mangled arm, who claimed no special gift of foresight. He treated her courteously, but seldom consulted her.

  She would serve him even so, uncomplaining, until her peaceable death eleven years later – when Vincente would replace her, as a favour to an old friend and against his own misgivings, with a young girl whose name was Ignella, and whose face was strangely scarred …

  But meanwhile, in his days of grief following his wife and son’s deaths, Vincente returned Chloe’s dowry unspent to Ferdinand, little though that cheered the stricken king; and gave up his useless knighthood. He would be naught but a seafarer now – and one who no longer deluded himself about the ocean on which he sailed.

  The sea was a fool. Vincente had been told it often enough by old sailors, but now he knew it himself to be true. Oh, the Great Ocean still called to him in all its magnificence and wonder, he would still voyage upon it willingly, despite everything it had stolen from him. But it was a fool nonetheless. Cold, brutal and witless.

  And only a fool in turn would give it his love.

  Then, three months later, having shut up his mansion for good, and put away his mourning clothes, Vincente went down to the docks and – as was his right – gave the Vanquish its new name.

  News of his choice soon spread throughout the kingdoms, and it only deepened the hatred of King Ferdinand when he learned that the man he blamed most for his daughter’s death (for had she not married Vincente, she would never have been aboard the Dauntless that night) had now christened a ship with her name.

  Vincente cared not at all. Let Ferdinand hate him, and let others puzzle that a battleship should be named in memory of a woman. They had always said, had they not, that she was as dangerous as a hundred-gun battleship – well then, let her become one. And her traitorous scapegoat had foretold that her name would live on in history – well then, so it would live on.

  For history would never – not if Vincente had anything to do with it – forget the deeds of the battleship Chloe.

  And so it has proved.

  But one last curiosity must be noted: twelve years after the events related above, on the exact anniversary of the death of his wife and child, Vincente – fifty years old now, and hardened by his long life at sea – found himself berthed in the New Island city of Stone Port, on escort duty once again with the tribute fleet.

  He marked the sad occasion by spending the night in sorrowful vigil, honouring his lost family, and wondering in his grief about the young man that Augustin might have grown into, had he lived. Then the very next morning, with those thoughts still aching in his mind, Vincente was called to pass judgement upon a young New Islander who had overnight trespassed on the Chloe.

  None other than Dow Amber.

  Who, as it happened, had celebrated his birthday the day before. The same day, it must be remembered, of Vincente and Chloe’s wedding, and the same day also of Augustin’s birth, and then his death.

  Now, there are those who divine great meaning in this manifold coincidence. They say that fate must have decreed that the life of Augustin be paired with the life of Dow, and that therefore Dow had been sent by fate to replace the son that was stolen from Vincente.

  Others dispute this, rightly pointing out that the coincidence is not so exact. After all, despite their shared birthdays, Dow was two years older than Augustin, and was sixteen when he and Vincente met, whereas Augustin, had he lived, would have been only fourteen.

  Still, it’s known that Dow was small for his age, and it must be wondered if the way that Vincente treated him that morning – and in the months that followed – was in some manner affected by the memory Dow stirred in Vincente of his own son who was no more.

  But of such inscrutable matters of the heart, nothing can be said for certain.

  THE BLINDING OF MOTHER GALE

  The clouds raced low and grey only a few hundred feet above he rounded peak of East Head. Stretched out there alone on the grassy hilltop, her green eyes stung almost to tears by the wind whipping in off the ocean, Susan Gale – oh so nearly sixteen years old now – stared down at the dark waters of the Rip and willed the maelstrom to form.

  Not that she truly expected it would. Even if the mighty whirlpool was more than just a legend (which Susan doubted) it would only rise – according to the tales the old folk told in the inn – after a south storm that blew for many days. And while the weather had been grey and windy all afternoon, this was no great tempest; and though the currents might seethe and race in the Rip below, there was no rotation in the waters as far as Susan could see; no deadly funnel opening. In fact, the fishing fleet was making its way calmly back through the Heads even as she watched, their work day nearly done. They certainly feared no awful pit opening beneath them.

  And Susan wished no harm to the boats, of course, nor that a whirlpool would actually swallow anyone. She was bored, that was all. Bored and idle and impatient for tomorrow to arrive. If – in the hope of some excitement to hurry time on – she summoned the dreadful maelstrom, she dared it only because she knew it would never come. After all, it was close to sixty years since last the whirlpool had risen, and in all Stromner only a few white-bearded old men and grey-haired old women could claim now to have beheld the thing with their own eyes.

  That is, if they weren’t simply making the whole thing up.

  With a sigh, Susan lifted her gaze to stare across the Rip to the town and fortress of Stone Port. Now there was excitement. Even from a mile’s distance the bustle of the place was palpable – more so than usual, in fact, for a Ship Kings fleet was in, and beyond the sea wall the harbour was jammed with their great vessels.

  Banners streamed from the fortress towers, labourers swarmed about th
e docks, and in the laneways behind the wharfs busy crowds crossed back and forth in front of shop windows that glowed bright against the oncoming evening. If not for the wind, Susan might even have been able to hear from across the water the shouts and cries from the streets.

  Soon now, she reminded herself. Soon she would behold it all first-hand …

  And not before time! She’d been yearning for years and years, after all, ever since she was a little girl, to make the short voyage over the channel to visit the wonders of Stone Port. But her parents had always forbidden it. Her father in particular. He hated the town, and had ever since the war. He thought of it as a Ship Kings place now, not properly part of New Island at all anymore – and no daughter of his was going to mingle in public with the sailors and officers and tribute collectors of the enemy!

  But really – the enemy? It seemed so stupid to Susan. The Great War was over. It had ended more than fifteen years ago, when she was just a baby. New Island had lost, that’s all there was to it. The Ship Kings were in charge now and that wasn’t going to change any time soon, so if anyone on New Island wanted to get anywhere these days, then they had little choice but to go through the Ship Kings.

  But her father didn’t see it that way. He’d served on the New Island fleets during the war, and their bitter defeat still rankled. So despite her pleadings, Susan had been denied Stone Port all her life. Which left only Stromner, and there was nothing to do in Stromner, cast away at the end of its long, lonely peninsula. There wasn’t even a road that led from there to anywhere else, only a few sandy paths twisting away into the dunes, leading to nowhere but the empty beaches of the ocean-side shore.

  But tomorrow – at last – she could put all that behind her. For tomorrow was her birthday. She would be sixteen years old and full grown – and finally able to do whatever she liked.