The Coming of the Whirlpool Page 8

  ‘But it’s a poor life, and so we have dwindled. Year by year, for ten years now, people have been leaving Stromner to seek a new fortune, in Lonsmouth or in Stone Port or in the other villages along the coast. Our young folk most of all; almost none remain. They know, as do we all, that Nathaniel’s curse still lies upon Stromner, and that nothing here will thrive until it is lifted.

  ‘Don’t mistake me. No blame here is to be laid upon Nathaniel. He cursed us only in his fever and fear that evening upon East Head, and besides, he spoke truly, for cowards we were. And in any case, the curse lies most heavily upon Nathaniel himself. His life has been grim since that day, and solitary. His only son and grandson are taken. His son’s wife, in her grief, soon went back to her people across the bay. And a year after the maelstrom, Nathaniel’s own wife died. Of a broken heart it’s said. Nathaniel has been alone ever since, the bitterness and despair growing in him season by season.

  ‘Oh, he has replaced the boat he lost, as you know, but he scarcely fishes any longer. He hunts the waters for a different quarry now. It is his lost family that he seeks, his son and grandson who the ocean stole. For in his madness – if madness it truly be – he believes that they are not dead. He believes that the maelstrom holds them yet alive in some secret cave or chamber below the ocean floor, and that one day they may be released. A desperate notion, no doubt, born of grief and longing. But then who really knows what lay at the bottom of that terrible funnel, or to where the whirlpool carried its trapped souls?

  ‘Not I. But it seems ill-omened to all of us here that Nathaniel has painted the maelstrom itself on the prow of his boat, and named the craft likewise, and goes hunting in the waters of the Rip, calling out to the whirlpool, demanding that it return and show him the way to his drowned loved ones. No good can come from such a summons. And so for some years now we men of Stromner have sat here in our empty inn and pondered what is to be done about Nathaniel, and about the curse that hangs so dolefully over all our heads. We found no answer.’ But here Boiler’s gaze focussed upon Dow. ‘Until, that is, we heard tell of you.’

  All the men were watching Dow. He looked about, puzzled by their faces. These were folk hardened from long life, each of them by far his elder, and yet there was a peculiar deference now in their expressions.

  Boiler nodded towards the door. ‘One day, messengers came to us here in this very bar, elders from the highlands who were going from fishing village to fishing village with a strange request. There was a lad, they said, and a family was wanted to take him as kin and raise him in the ways of the sea. And then the messengers grew hushed, revealing to us a great secret – this same lad was a direct descendant of no less than Admiral Honous Tombs.’

  In her corner the old woman – Mother Gale – lifted her head at last to stare at Dow with her blind eyes.

  ‘Honous Tombs,’ repeated Boiler, his chin rising. ‘Now that’s a name to rouse the blood. The captain of the Grey Sail has not been forgotten among the folk of the Claw. Nevertheless, no village would take the boy for fear of the Ship Kings’ displeasure should they ever learn of the secret. Stromner was the very last place to which the messengers came, and little did they expect from us, noting our poverty and our empty houses.

  ‘But we men here descried a special sign in their request. A sign and a hope. For it seemed to us that if Nathaniel could be made whole again and cured of his madness, then perhaps we all might be cured. But the only thing that might so heal Nathaniel was a family to replace – at least in part – the one he lost. A son to call his own again. And why, here was a lad needing a father.

  ‘But not just any lad. This boy was the heir of Honous Tombs himself – not only the greatest sea captain New Island has ever known, but also a native inhabitant of these very headlands. To be sure, Honous was not born or raised in Stromner, but rather in Stone Port close across the channel, nevertheless he surely must have tread the streets of this village during his lifetime. And it is beyond question that when the Great War came many men from Stromner embarked to sail and fight with him. Nathaniel’s own father not least among them!

  ‘Aye, the name of Tombs was a weighty token to us. Dimly though we might grasp the pattern of it, surely fate was weaving a web of purpose here. And so we told the messengers, send the lad if you will.

  ‘And so you came . . .’

  But at that Boiler trailed off, as if no longer certain of his tale, and a silence settled, the wind and rain outside in momentary lull.

  Mother Gale rapped her stick. ‘Aye, and so he came, ten years to the day, and what has it led to but the near death of them both?’

  Boiler heaved a great sigh and shook his head. ‘Aye, ten years to the day. It wasn’t by chance, we can be sure of that. Fate is casting its net still, my friends, and we’re all of us entangled.’ His glance went to the man sitting closest to the door. ‘Ethan – now is the time.’

  The man nodded, stood, and went out into the night. As he departed, the storm rose again and wind whistled tunelessly at the doors.

  Dow shivered: despite the warmth of the fire he felt a cold bewilderment. It had seeped into him as he’d listened to the story of Nathaniel and the maelstrom. He’d had no conception that such grim events were responsible for his coming to Stromner, or that such a weight of expectation had been laid on his shoulders. It didn’t seem fair. He had wanted to go to sea, that was all. The death of Nathaniel’s kin, and the ill fortune of the fishing village ever since – none of it was any of his doing. So how could it be up to him to now set things right?

  Boiler was studying him. ‘It’s a lot to take in lad, I know. We should have told you all this earlier. But we weren’t to know you would come on the day that you did, and that Nathaniel would take it so hard . . .’

  Dow’s mouth was dry. ‘He doesn’t want me.’

  And that was all that really mattered. The hope that these men had placed in him, fair or unfair, had already come to nothing. Nathaniel wanted no new son. And if that was so, then of what use was Dow to Stromner? No use at all. Perhaps now they would simply send him back to the highlands. Dow felt a sharp stab of homesickness, and for an instant would have actually welcomed the excuse to leave and go home to his family.

  But Boiler only shrugged. ‘Well now, he didn’t want you last night. He was far gone to drink and sadness and even further from his right mind than usual. But he remains a man of this village all the same. And in Stromner, what the village decides upon, everyone obeys. We’re like the crew of a ship at sea – no one man can go against all the others. Even Nathaniel does not dare.’

  Realisation dawned upon Dow. ‘You’re going to make me go back to him? After he tried to drown me?’

  Boiler shifted uncomfortably. ‘Make you? No, lad. We’re going to ask you. Although it’s true to say that if you refuse, then I don’t see how you would be able to stay here and learn the ways of the sea, for no other fisherman in this village needs a son. We believe still that fate has decreed it is Nathaniel who must take you, in the place of the family he lost. We have talked with him at length this very afternoon, now that his drunken- ness has past. He has declared himself willing to bow to our command and accept you into his home. Grudgingly perhaps, but with promise that he will not seek to harm you again, and that he will teach you the skills of fishing. Ethan has gone to fetch him now, so that you may be reconciled in our presence. Nevertheless, the final choice in this is yours.’

  Dow stared around at the men in growing disbelief. Could they be serious?

  ‘Ha!’ Mother Gale was licking her lips, her white eyes rolling. ‘It’s a fine choice you’re giving him. To crawl back to his home in defeat, or to put his life in the hands of a madman. What fair and just men you are.’

  Dow almost nodded in agreement. What kind of folk were they indeed, these fishermen? How could they ask such a thing? How could they load all their old guilt and shame upon a stranger in this way? When Dow had first spied the great ships sailing from the headland, he had imagined th
e sailors on board as the boldest of men, fearless in the face of wind and wave. He had expected even these humble fishermen to be the same. But the men of Stromner were all looking away from him now, studying their drinks, or the walls, as if the anger of a mere youth was more than they could bear. Only Boiler, sad and silent, held his gaze.

  The outer door clapped open, then the inner, and amid a swirl of cold air the man named Ethan returned. Behind him came a tall figure, yet gaunt and hunched, paused unwilling in the doorway.

  ‘Nathaniel Shear,’ said Boiler. ‘Welcome.’

  The old fisherman lifted one eyebrow to consider the room, not bothering to hide his disdain for everyone in it. ‘I’ll not bide long, Boiler Swan,’ he said in a parched voice. ‘So make this quick.’

  ‘It’s up to the lad here,’ the innkeeper responded. He turned to Dow. ‘Well? Is it the life of the sea that you’re craving still? Or not?’

  Dow stared from Boiler to Nathaniel. He had expected to loathe the very sight of the old man, but in light of his disappointment with the other fishermen, and after all he had heard of the maelstrom, Dow found himself regarding Nathaniel less harshly. The weak, raging drunkard of the previous night was gone. In his place was a more sober figure, haggard maybe, but enduring, with an air about him of habitual silence, as befitting one who had lived long alone. There was still great bitterness smouldering in the old man’s bloodshot stare, but Dow now knew the tale of that bitterness, and somehow it even lent Nathaniel a strange authority. The other men, with the exception of Boiler, seemed to have shrunk in comparison.

  Mother Gale, however, was shaking her head. ‘The life of the sea, you say, Boiler? What life of the sea? No one here lives that life anymore. You live only the life of the bay, and that’s another thing entire.’

  Boiler’s red face flushed redder. ‘Don’t mock us, woman, until you’ve seen what we’ve seen.’ Then he said to Dow, ‘We are cursed men, remember, and only death awaits us upon the ocean. We fish as we must.’

  But Dow had glanced to Nathaniel and caught a gleam in the old man’s eye; a flicker of contempt that dismissed and denied Boiler’s justifications. And hadn’t Dow already seen it himself – of all these timid fisherman, Nathaniel alone was fearless enough to launch his boat in a storm, or to dare the Rip in flood. The old man was a danger, yes, but if Dow truly wanted to learn of the wild ocean, then to whom else could he turn? He remembered what it had been like to master the boat out in the Rip, and by his own skill tear it free of the currents. He would never experience that again if he went back to the highlands – nor indeed would he ever experience it in any boat that sailed from Stromner, except for one.

  ‘I will stay with Nathaniel,’ he said, eyeing the old man directly, amazed at the confidence in his own voice. ‘If he will have me. And I will sail with him and learn of the sea, wherever he might voyage upon it.’

  Mother Gale was rocking back and forth on her seat, nodding gleefully as if she had foreseen this all along, but Nathaniel only straightened severely for a moment, his unreadable gaze fixed upon Dow.

  ‘So be it,’ he said at last. Then he turned and went out into the night, not waiting to see if Dow followed.

  The foul weather held throughout that night, and for a further day and night beyond, but then the clouds and rain blew away and there came a sun-filled morning and a warming breeze from the south east. It marked the beginning of summer, and of Dow’s initiation into the fishing life. For the next three months he lived in Nathaniel’s house and sailed in Nathaniel’s boat and hauled on Nathaniel’s nets and obeyed the old man in all ways. And there were two things that Dow discovered about himself. He loved sailing – the boats, the water, the wind. But he hated fishing.

  Every day followed the same pattern. Dow would be roused before dawn by the clatter through the thin walls of Nathaniel boiling tea. The fisherman was always the first awake, despite the fact that he drank late into every night, long after Dow had gone to his dismal bed. Some nights Dow was sure he did not sleep at all. The two of them would breakfast frugally and wordlessly, then, as the sun was rising, they would trudge down to the beach and to Nathaniel’s boat, the Maelstrom.

  The other men of the village would be there, preparing their own craft. Most of the boats were somewhat larger than the Maelstrom, carrying a crew of three or even four, but so shrunken was the population of Stromner that only half a dozen such vessels could be manned on any given day. There were few young faces among the crews, and not a single lad of Dow’s age. Perhaps that was why the morning launch was so cheerless. Dow had imagined that, with the promise of a new day ahead, there would be shouts and laughter between the men, as there had been with the timber cutters back home. But there was no laughter, and little enough talk.

  Nathaniel, in any case, remained apart from the others. In silence, he and Dow would slide the Maelstrom down over the stones and into the water, and just as silently lower the keel and set the sail. Then, in the light morning airs, and with the sun lifting behind them, they would plot a course away from the beach and out into the great emptiness of the Claw. Nathaniel would be in the stern, one bent arm resting almost idly on the tiller; and Dow, still drowsy and sluggish, would be occupied with trimming the sail and readying the net.

  Within an hour, however, they would trade positions, and Dow would come fully awake at last as he took the Maelstrom in hand. The sun would be warm by then and the morning mists clearing. Now came his lessons in the art of sailing – or what, in Nathaniel’s eyes, passed for lessons. The old man was a reluctant teacher. He rarely addressed Dow directly, or even looked at him, and his instructions were terse, doled out without context or elaboration. But Dow understood that it was the best he could expect. Nathaniel had made his promise to the village, and was prepared to keep that promise, but only to the minimum necessary.

  It didn’t matter. Dow was such an eager student that he more than made up for any lack in his master. It didn’t even feel to him that he was learning to sail, it was more like rediscovering something he already knew. From the moment he had first set his fingers upon the tiller during the storm in the Rip, something inside him had simply understood the way that wind and wood and canvas worked. Nor did he again experience the awful nausea and weakness that had accosted him on that first voyage. Sea sickness it was called, and apparently it could afflict even the most experienced mariners – but Dow remained blessedly free of it.

  Where such innate abilities came from, he didn’t know – unless it really was the ancient blood of Honous Tombs in his veins – but he suspected it was something that even a thousand lessons might never teach. And maybe Nathaniel saw it too, because although he never praised Dow’s efforts, or gave a single word of encouragement, the old man also never bothered to explain the more rudimentary laws of sailing, as might be expected when instructing a boy new to the sea. Instead he taught Dow only the finer details of the profession; the tricks that could tighten a sail, or edge a course yet closer to the wind.

  Thus engaged, they would sail on until the sliver of land behind them sank below the horizon. To glance about – apart from the prominences of the two Heads, sticking up like islands – they might have been far out upon the ocean proper, for although the Claw was a landlocked body of water, it was still so vast as to feel almost limitless. It could be a hazardous place too, when the mood took it. There were no great storms that summer perhaps, but there were brief squalls and passing gales and sudden waves that arose from nowhere; challenges more than enough to test and hone Dow’s newly emerging skills.

  He learnt how to locate the lightest of winds by the ghostly shimmers they cast on calm waters. He learnt how to discern an over-strong gust as it approached on a blustery day by the way the foam on the waves flattened and thinned beneath it. He learnt how best to steer when the bay was smooth, and how best to steer when it was all chop and spray. He learnt how to navigate allowing for currents and tides, and how to set a course, tacking this way and that, for a fixed point upo
n the land. He learnt about the shaping of the sail, and how it could catch the wind in different ways. He learnt the mysterious truth that the boat did not necessarily move the swiftest with the wind behind it, but that rather it was a wind coming from an angle that sometimes allowed the boat to fly most freely.

  He learnt how to be sure of his course even in the many fogs that beset the Claw. He learnt to note the flow of the mist as it oozed across the water, to listen for the far-off sounds of land and surf, or to plumb the depths with a weighted rope and discover where he was by recognising certain shallows and sandbanks. When far out upon the Claw, beyond sight of even the Heads, he learnt to find his way by reading the sun and the moon and the habits of the wind. And he learnt how to read the night sky, a map so clear that if only the stars shone by day as well, and through the long overcasts of winter, then surely, Dow thought, they could lead a ship right across the ocean and on to the very ends of the earth . . .

  By mid-morning Nathaniel and Dow would have sailed far out into the Claw’s heart, and both the sky and the bay would have cleared to a hard blue. A fair wind would be blowing, Dow would be at the tiller and the Maelstrom would be skipping so easily across the white-flecked waves that it might have been a flat stone skimmed across a river by a boy. In such moments Dow knew that – whatever else might be said about his life in Stromner – sailing itself was the greatest joy he had ever known. It was like some glorious and unpunished act of theft, so much speed simply snatched from the elements with no price to pay. It was as if, in his old life, a tree in the forest had fallen not because of axes, but because the fellers had simply asked it to. How could anyone ever tire of such a thing?