The Coming of the Whirlpool Page 9

  But then his eye would light upon Nathaniel, hunched silent in the bow. If the old man had ever felt any such pleasure in sailing, he did not appear to now. He never smiled, no matter how fine the day. He never lifted his chin to a fresh breeze, he never leant gratefully into a cooling dash of spray on a hot afternoon. He seemed cut off from feeling, indifferent to any joy the bay might offer, as if the act of sailing was no more a thing to him than walking.

  And even for Dow there came a point in every day when the delight must end and the drudgery of fishing begin. Nathaniel would declare that the fishing grounds had been reached, the sail would be shortened, the net humped over the side, and the boat would slow to a wallow, an animal unhappily leashed. They would creep back and forth across the water, pulling in the net and casting it out repeatedly, both men sweating in the midday sun. Sometimes there were fish to be heaved in, silver and grey and gasping for their lives. More often there were not.

  Indeed, in their first few weeks of fishing, Dow could not help but notice how small his and Nathaniel’s daily catches were compared to the other boats, and for a time he privately scorned Nathaniel as the worst fisherman in the village. But eventually he came to suspect that the old man chose his fishing grounds not in the expectation of a catch, but merely to be as far as he could from any other boat; casting his nets where no other fishermen thought it worth their while. Hadn’t Boiler Swan said it? Nathaniel no longer cared to hunt fish. It was the great whirlpool he hungered for, and until a south storm should blow again, and the maelstrom rise, it seemed that he sought only isolation upon the waters.

  Nevertheless, the work went on. Once the net was cast, Nathaniel would steer the Maelstrom in a broad circle until they met up with where they had begun, and Dow would draw the net into a great bag from which any encircled fish could not escape, then he’d haul the dead weight of it back into the boat. The reward might be three fish flopping in the mesh, or five, their eyes staring blankly even as their mouths gaped and blood burst from their labouring gills.

  At first they all looked much the same to Dow, and he would never like the feel or smell of them. Fish were fish. But in time he learnt their names, and how to identify them. The most common were Mackerel, long lean fish that swam in silver schools just below the surface. There were also Salt Perch, bigger and from deeper down, and Claw Cod, bigger fish again that drifted with the tide in solemn, stately assemblies. And there were other fish besides, Grey Shad and Dart and Short Eels, each with their own hue and sheen and shape.

  But sometimes different creatures were hauled up in the net: turtles, which were regarded as delicacies to eat; and small sharks, thrashing about and snapping with their razor teeth; or shelled and spiny things that were dragged up from the bay floor, some with claws, some with dangerous spikes, some that were worth keeping and some that were quickly thrown away. And then there were the slimy things of tentacles and suckers and slavering mouths. Squid and octopus and jellyfish, squashed shapeless and strange once out of the water.

  And too big for any net were the larger creatures of the bay. Giant turtles, twenty times the size of their smaller cousins, soaring gracefully along a fathom or so beneath the waves; and seals, warm-blooded and air-breathing, leaping playfully about the boat, eyes brimming with intelligence; and of course the greater sharks, white and deadly as they cruised past on their endless patrols.

  But it was the other things that fascinated Dow most – the creatures even larger still that he half-glimpsed in the depths. Much of the Claw was quite shallow, its sandy floor home to beds of undulating sea grass, but out in the centre a long canyon reached inwards from the Rip, its bottom lost in hazy blue night. How deep it fell no one in Stromner could say, but staring down into the darkness made Dow feel that he hung uneasily suspended over a void. And once or twice he saw – or thought he saw – immense shapes moving down there.

  ‘There is some great beast swimming far below us,’ he whispered in awe to Nathaniel, upon the first such sighting. ‘What might it be?’

  The old man did not even stir to glance over the side. ‘Such shadows are no concern of ours. Whatever manner of creature they be, they hail from the deep ocean, and visit the bay only in passing, never to rise to the surface. Once, perhaps, we New Islanders knew more of them, but the Ship Kings stole away all our true learning when they forbade us from sailing the open sea – we are left only with rumours and hearsay about the monsters of the abyss. I won’t waste my time repeating children’s tales. Back to your work.’

  An answer which satisfied Dow not at all.

  But perhaps the greatest of all the puzzles he encountered that summer was nothing to do with monsters or fish or with the vagaries of wind and weather. Instead it concerned the hull of the Maelstrom. For a humble fishing craft fashioned from simple timbers, the boat possessed a remarkably slick outer hull. Dow had noticed it the first time he’d laid a hand on the Maelstrom, how the wood felt almost glassy to touch, how it gleamed darkly. But it wasn’t glass. There seemed to be nothing there but the wood itself. And it wasn’t just the Maelstrom – every boat that Dow inspected had the same superb gloss to its hull. Yet not once did he witness a single fisherman ever painting or polishing their craft.

  He questioned Nathaniel about it one day, but the old man merely stared as if only a fool could be so ignorant, and shook his head. So instead, one night at the inn, Dow pressed Boiler Swan for an explanation.

  ‘Well,’ said the innkeeper, ‘that’s just nicre, isn’t it.’

  ‘Nicre?’

  Boiler looked surprised. ‘You don’t know of it? I would’ve thought it common knowledge, even to a highlander. But it’s simply told; whenever timber is immersed at length in salt water, a thin film will form across the wood, smooth and slippery, like the skin of a pearl – nicre is its name. And a blessing it is too, for nicre keeps a hull clean and quick and sound. In fresh water a hull will get all fouled with barnacles and rot away within a decade if it isn’t repainted. But not in salt water. Why, with no maintenance at all other then wetting it regular, a salt-water hull can last a century and more, thanks to nicre.’

  ‘But what is it? Where does it come from?’

  ‘Now that I can’t say. I’ve heard tell it’s tiny mites in the sea water, so small that no one can see them, bonding with the wood. But how anyone can know that if no one can see these mites, that I couldn’t guess.’

  Out on the bay, Nathaniel and Dow would usually be done with the day’s fishing by mid-afternoon. They would haul in the net for the last time and the catch, large or small, would be piled up out of the sun under a wet sheet of canvas. Then they would set sail for home. The sea breezes of evening would be rising, and it was a simple thing to tack into them, southwards.

  For Dow, these were perhaps the finest hours of the day, with the work finished and the bay turned a rich slate-blue by the lengthening sunlight. He would have the helm, so the course was his to set and the wind his to read. It was also a chance to rest tired muscles and to swig generously from the beer flask. Even Nathaniel would allow himself to unbend somewhat, sitting back and stretching his legs in the warm afternoon sun.

  It was during one such interlude that Dow asked if it was true that Nathaniel’s father had sailed with Honous Tombs.

  The old man was gazing at the horizon, and seemed to answer unthinkingly, his tone faraway. ‘He did, as a boy, younger even than you are now, and long before he wed my mother or fathered me. He served on the Grey Sail, and was there when Honous Tombs died.’ But then Nathaniel sat up abruptly, remembering himself. ‘He was too young – just ten when he embarked. They should never have taken him, but by then the war was going poorly and New Island was running short of hands to man the fleet.’

  Dow was impressed. ‘He was on the Grey Sail in the last battle? When it was captured?’

  Nathaniel considered him coldly. ‘Aye. He watched as the Admiral was executed right there on the main deck. And a dozen years more it was after that – his youth and str
ength burned away by hard labour on the Ship Kings vessels – before my father was allowed to come home again.’

  Dow absorbed this. He hadn’t known that the Ship Kings employed New Island men, after the war, to crew their ships. His sea-longing awoke, sudden and painful. ‘Did he ever speak of it? Did he ever say where he sailed to, and what he saw of the great ocean?’

  ‘He was not a traveller on holiday,’ Nathaniel retorted. ‘He was little more than a chained slave. No, he did not speak of it.’

  Dow pushed on regardless. ‘What of the Ship Kings themselves? Did he say what they were like?’

  ‘What need he have said? They were then as they are now – a proud, cruel folk.’ But at that the old fisherman sagged and shook his head. ‘One thing only he told me. He said they were fine sailors, to be sure, but no finer than our own crews had been. It was only superior numbers that won them the war. More men, more ships. And more fools us, to battle against them.’ He looked sourly at Dow. ‘And triple the fools we’d be, eighty years later, to think that a watered-down descendant of Honous Tombs could change anything for the better.’

  And so Dow let it go.

  By sunset on most days they would be nearing the Heads, and home. But before they could return to Stromner they must first visit Stone Port across the channel, to unload their catch. This meant passing nigh to the Rip, but Dow had learned to his relief that as long as the tide was not running full, and as long as no storm was blowing, the Rip was not especially dangerous to an experienced hand. With Nathaniel at the helm again the Maelstrom would make its way down the western side of the channel to the Stone Port gate, where the immense wooden doors always stood open. They had not been shut – so the story went – since the days of the Great War itself.

  Within lay Stone Port harbour. Sheltered by the sea wall – which was fashioned in part from huge stone blocks, and in part carved from the natural rock formations of West Head – it was a wide space of deep water, the arc of its inner shore lined with docks and wharves and piers of all kind. Behind them were ranked warehouses and tall cranes and timber yards stacked high, and beyond those again, climbing up the steep hillside, was the town, capped with its dour fortress.

  So fine a harbour was it that a mighty fleet of great ships might have ridden there with ease, resting between ocean voyages – but in fact, to Dow’s disappointment, there were no such ships present, and although he kept watch for one, none appeared all throughout that summer. Even so, the port was a busy place, with numerous smaller boats and barges coming and going in constant procession, for it was here that the Ship Kings gathered their tribute, in the form of produce from all over New Island. Even at dusk the harbour would still be bustling with arrivals and departures, and Nathaniel would have to lower the sail on the Maelstrom to steer a course through the traffic as Dow bent his back to the oars.

  Eventually they would draw up to a low wharf that was reserved for the use of fishermen. Here waited the fish merchants – and the fish gutters too, and the preservers with their barrels of brine. Dow would be left to make fast the boat and unload while Nathaniel clambered up onto the dock to talk terms. Half their catch was destined to be eaten fresh by the inhabitants of Stone Port, and for those fish they would be paid a fair price. But the rest of the catch would be salted and stowed in barrels as provision for the Ship Kings fleets – and for those fish they were paid nothing at all. Such was the law.

  Often Nathaniel had to wait until other fishermen had finished their dealings, and in those times Dow was free, after unloading, to leave the boat and explore. Week by week, he managed to cover much of the port, wandering along the wharves amid the sweating labourers, or peering into the warehouses to note the great hoards stored there, wealth beyond anything he’d ever seen. He even ventured beyond the wharf district and into the town, with its strange narrow houses and windowed shops and hurrying crowds, marvelling at how different it all was from Yellow Bank, or even from Stromner.

  But there was a limit to his exploration, for all the streets led ultimately to an open square at the foot of the walls of the Stone Port fortress, and there, before gates of wrought iron, stood armed guards. The gates themselves were open, but few people were permitted through. Everything beyond – the tall houses that loomed above the walls, and the high keep that rose atop West Head – was the domain of the Ship Kings. There the colonial governor, and the lords and ladies of his court, held sway over the town and over all New Island.

  The fortress was the most forbidding of strongholds, a testimony to the Ship Kings’ power and dominion – but Dow had learned that it was not they who had built it. Rather it had been the New Islanders themselves, long ago in the days before the Great War. Its purpose then had been to defend the channel between the Heads, and even now its walls bristled with cannon that pointed out across the Rip. But in the end the Ship Kings had not needed to invade the Claw by force, or to storm the fortress; they had triumphed upon the open sea, and Stone Port had been surrendered to them without a shot, to become their seat on the defeated island.

  And yet, although Dow would watch eagerly at the fortress gates, the Ship Kings in person remained tantalisingly hidden from view. Those allowed to pass through by the guards, and even the guards themselves, were all plainly New Islanders by their dress and their accents; merely servants and agents acting on the Ship Kings’ behalf. Frustrated, Dow would have to turn and hurry back through the streets to the docks, where Nathaniel would have concluded his business and be waiting impatiently.

  They would push off and turn the Maelstrom, finally, for home. It would most likely be dark by that time, and the bonfire atop the keep would be flaring into life, casting its orange glow across the inner harbour. Once they were through the gate, however, it would be true night, and in darkness would pass the last leg of their daily voyage: the run across the channel and around the inner promontory of East Head to the shelter of Stromner’s beach.

  It was a short trip, skimming lightly along under the early stars, and should have been a gratifying interval, with home and the end of toil in sight. But Dow would always find his gaze drawn away from East Head to look southwards, through the Rip, out to the open sea. A ghostly white line would be visible there in the night, marking the point where the ocean waves crashed eternally at the channel’s entrance. And beyond would be the great darkness that was the ocean, untrammelled and ever changing and beckoning to Dow’s heart.

  The old ache would ignite in him and even the day’s few pleasures and satisfactions would fall away, leaving him empty. The Claw, for all its expanse, would suddenly seem like a small thing, a pond on which children might play. When was he going to sail upon the sea? When would he be allowed to test himself against the true waves of the ocean? When would Nathaniel weary of the confines of the bay and venture out beyond the Heads?

  The old man was not afraid to do so, of that Dow was sure. The other men of Stromner may have lost their nerve, but not Nathaniel. He would dare the sea if he so chose. Only, would he choose? And when?

  Once, on a rough and windy day that Nathaniel had declared unfit for fishing, Dow in his restlessness walked from Stromner and crossed the mile or so over the humped dunes behind the village to reach the southern side of the peninsula. This was the ocean side, and here the surf beat endlessly upon a long sandy beach that ran away eastwards beyond sight. Dow stared out over the sea until his eyes stung with tears, so beautiful was it, and so nearly within reach. He even waded in chest deep until the surf shoved him effortlessly this way and that . . .

  But it wasn’t enough. There was simply no way to partake of the ocean from the shore. Not really. Only in a ship could a man go in answer to the call of the horizon. Dow waded back to dry land and walked home, dripping wet and more disconsolate than ever.

  So it was that most evenings, as he and Nathaniel rounded East Head and ran the Maelstrom up onto the inner beach, Dow’s mood would have fallen low. And the sight of Stromner itself only oppressed him further. After the bust
le of Stone Port, the windswept dunes looked especially bleak and empty. Barely a light shone from the village, mournful night birds would be calling, and no matter how warm the summer’s day had been, it always felt colder there, and damp, and reeking. Weary now, Dow would help to drag the boat up over the stones and to stow away the sail and the net. Then Nathaniel would count out the few small coins that were Dow’s wages, and finally the two would go their separate ways.

  For Dow had quickly tired of spending his evenings at Nathaniel’s house, and of sharing in the old man’s meagre dinners. Instead, he would make his way up the dark path to the looming shadow of the inn. There in the little bar he would take his evening meal – and there, every night, he would find the same few men gathered; their faces, their drinks, their talk, their very positions at the tables, unchanging it seemed from the night of his first visit.

  Presiding over them, dispensing the beer and whisky, would be Boiler Swan. In fact the innkeeper presided over all of Stromner, its chief man by default, for since the village’s decline its council of elders had ceased to meet – or if they did meet, then they met in Boiler’s bar, and acceded to his authority anyway. He was also the one friendly face that Dow might encounter all day, his ugly features never failing to split into a smile upon noting Dow’s arrival. It was from the innkeeper alone that Dow earned any praise for his quick mastery of sailing.

  ‘I knew it that day you brought Nathaniel home from the Rip,’ Boiler avowed one evening, clapping Dow across the shoulders. ‘You’re a sailor by blood. You’ll bring luck to us, I’m certain.’

  An endorsement which gave Dow little comfort, for what luck was he supposed to bring, and how was he to bring it?

  He and Boiler talked of other things at times – of the history of Stromner and Stone Port, or of fishing and the ways of boats – but inevitably the innkeeper would be called away and Dow would be left alone at his table for much of the night. The other men were polite enough if he addressed them, but Dow could sense a wariness in their manner, a caution in their eyes. He even understood it. He was the outsider. But that understanding didn’t help his loneliness.