The Coming of the Whirlpool (13 page)

‘Maybe,' said a man near her, ‘but how
many
ships is it? As a rule we only ever see two or three here at any moment – warships I mean, not merchantmen – and usually it's the same two or three each time. How many others are there, that's what I want to know.'

‘And you can go on wanting,' came the woman's reply. ‘The Ship Kings won't be telling the likes of us.'

‘Hold there a moment!' called Boiler Swan, who was placing a third mug in front of Dow. ‘There may be no way to know how big the Ship Kings fleet is
now
, but we can sure enough figure how big it was
once.
Would I be right in my thinking there, Mother Gale?'

Dow had not noticed the old woman amid the crush, but now the crowd shifted so that a space opened about her usual corner, and there she sat, as ever, whisky glass at her side and a gnarled hand gripping her cane. She had thrown her head back to stare right at the innkeeper.

‘Aye, Boiler, you might be, at that,' she declared, after a pause for silence to fall. ‘Or at least we can make a reasoned guess. It'll be the days of the Great War you'd be speaking of. I was but a babe, of course, but my father served throughout, and there's nothing he didn't tell me of those times. I remember it, like I remember everything, and there's no one else can say that, other than Nathaniel maybe, and he won't tell what he knows anyhow.'

‘Well then,' prompted Boiler, ‘what of the Ship Kings fleet?'

But the old woman wasn't to be hurried. She shook her head. ‘No man from New Island ever counted the full number of the Ship Kings vessels, so there's no saying for certain. Other than this – those of our men who survived the war all reported that the enemy outnumbered us by at least two ships to one.'

The room had waited in respectful quiet. Now a voice from the back piped up. ‘So how big was
our
fleet?'

Mother Gale smiled widely in reply, showing gaps in her yellow teeth. ‘Time was we had no fleet at all, or one barely worth the name. Before the war things was very different. Our merchantmen plied the seas with scarcely a care, trading all across the Four Isles. The Ship Kings mostly warred against each other back then, and were friendly enough to outsiders. Oh, sometimes one kingdom or another might turn pirate and start attacking our vessels, so we did keep
some
warships for protection. But in those days New Island could field no more than three or four first rate battleships, and maybe half a dozen frigates besides.'

Mutters of disappointment sounded from about the bar. Three or four? So few!

‘Aye, aye,' Mother Gale was nodding, ‘but soon enough things changed. The Ship Kings united finally under the one Sea Lord, and then they sought dominion over all the ocean and all the Isles. That's when war loomed, and that's when we began building a proper fleet. How big did it get? That's hard to say. It was a long war and many ships were launched, but many were sunk in battle and many were lost at sea never to be seen again, so it's not as if there was ever the one fleet in the one place all at the one time. But as my father reckoned it, at our greatest strength we could have fielded a dozen first rate battleships, hundred-gunners all, and as many as thirty frigates of fifty or sixty guns apiece.'

Now the murmurs were more appreciative. Over forty ships! And to think, they had once sailed the very waters of the Claw, and crowded the docks of Stone Port and Lonsmouth. It was hard to imagine.

‘By which reckoning,' came Boiler's grim reminder, ‘the Ship Kings could muster twenty-four battleships, and sixty frigates.'

The murmurs fell silent.

Mother Gale nodded again, sadly it seemed. ‘Aye. And so the war was lost. Slowly, it's true, for we won our share of engagements at sea. But we were worn down in the end. My father told me that when Admiral Tombs led our last fleet out, he had but fifteen patched-up vessels all told. And no ship of our own has set sail from here in the eighty years since. What size the Ship Kings fleet is today, and what manner of craft, I cannot tell you. I know only what has been. But my father never spoke of giant ships, or giant guns. It shows only the depth of our ignorance, that we are reduced to guessing about such things now.'

Gravely, Mother Gale drank from her glass and set it down. A mournful quiet held in the room for a time.

Dow drank too, a deep gulp, for the mention of his famous ancestor had disturbed him. But when he lowered his mug he saw that many of the Stromner folk were watching him now, as if they too were remembering who he was and how he had come to be there. An expectation weighed in those stares. There was something he was supposed to do that would change all their fates. That's what they believed, and that's what they were waiting for.

Well, they would be waiting eternally, Dow decided, his gloom returning in full force. If there had ever truly been a purpose to his presence in Stromner, and to his kinship with Honous Tombs, then surely it was rendered meaningless if he was forbidden from ever learning about the ways of the open sea. They should take it up with Nathaniel, if they wanted an answer . . .

Nevertheless, the stares demanded a response.

Dow cleared his throat. ‘The Ship Kings,' he said to the room, looking at no one directly. ‘How do they navigate out on the wide ocean? How do they find their way in fogs, or when clouds hide the stars? How did our own ships do it, in the days before the war? What is the art?'

Faces turned away, and Dow saw in them the shame at their own lack of knowing. Only Mother Gale responded, she who surely had never even sailed a boat, but who was the repository for all history in the village – a single blind scribe, in effect, instead of the sighted three that Dow had known in the highlands.

‘The art is lost to us,' she lamented, the white orbs of her eyes gone empty, focussed upon no one. ‘Oh, we knew of it in the old times – at least, the captains of our ships, and their officers, knew of it. But after the war the Ship Kings imprisoned all such men, or had them killed, and forbade anyone else to speak of sea navigation, and so the knowledge was never passed down to any New Island child. The Ship Kings were wise in their cruelty, for we will never challenge them now, when we cannot even sail beyond sight of land without fear.

‘My own father survived the war, it is true, but he had not the knowledge, for he was no officer. A mere cook's assistant he was, and the art of way-finding was not taught to one such as he, nor to any common sailor. It was a learned thing, for learned folk. But just once he did speak to me, in private, of what he'd witnessed of navigation at sea, little though his words explain.

‘Listen now, for this is what he told me. There was a glass device, he said, that was kept on the high deck, close by the ship's wheel, set in a special stand of wood and brass. The officers would stare into that glass and somehow from it they would learn their whereabouts upon the ocean, no matter the weather, no matter the darkest night. And hence they would know which course to steer.

‘It sounds fanciful, does it not? But there must be truth in it, for haven't I seen myself – as a girl, in the days before my sight was taken away – on the vessels the Ship Kings send, a stand set close to the wheel, just as my father described. The secret glass is kept there I don't doubt, and wondrous it must be to look into it and have the whole ocean revealed to you at a glance.'

The old woman raised her whisky and licked her lips.

‘Indeed, this I foretell – on the day that a New Islander finally looks again into such a glass, and learns its mysteries, then the time of our long suffering will be over, and the day of our redemption will be at hand.'

And with that Mother Gale upended her glass, drank it empty, then slammed it down on the bench beside her and called for another. Discussion burst forth all about the bar, a flurry of arguments running this way and that, for many had heard similar tales of such a magical instrument, and everyone had their own theory as to how it might work or whether such a marvel could even be real.

But Dow no longer gave heed. He was lost to a sudden memory – of the moment the
Chloe
had slid by him to enter the Stone Port gate, the moment that he'd stared up at the young officer whom he'd mistaken for the captain. That officer had been posed forward of the ship's wheel, calling commands up to the rigging. One of his hands had been raised, trumpet like, to his mouth. The other, however, had been resting upon an object made of brass and wood; a stand of some kind, about four feet high, at the top of which there had glinted glass.

Mother Gale was
right
. The device existed; it stood in plain view. With access to such a wondrous thing, a man would be free to sail fearlessly across the great ocean beyond sight of landmark or sounding!

Dow swigged from his mug again, but he knew that no matter how much ale he drank, there would be no peace or sleep for him tonight. He would be too tortured by thoughts of escape – escape from the safe, challenge-less waters of the Claw, escape from Nathaniel's constrictions and hatred, escape from the drear life of a fisherman. The mysterious way-finding glass could make it all possible. But even though it was so achingly close at hand, there upon the
Chloe
, it was forbidden to one such as he, as out of reach to him as were the stars.

Unless, that was, he climbed up to the deck of the great ship, docked now in Stone Port for weeks to come, and looked for himself.

T
he rest of the Ship Kings fleet arrived two days later. Nathaniel and Dow were out fishing at the time, so they missed the grand sight of so many ships appearing at the Heads and then passing through the Stone Port gate. But when they entered the harbour themselves late that afternoon, they found that the docks were now jammed to capacity with great vessels lined up stern to bow, the multitude of their masts as thick as a forest.

Nathaniel had said there would be eleven ships, but in fact Dow counted thirteen newcomers, in addition to the
Chloe.
Nathaniel, it transpired, had been referring only to the number of merchantmen in the fleet. There were indeed eleven of these – square, hulking craft that were near as large as the battleship in sheer size, but which possessed none of its lean grace, and none of its menace either, being quite unarmed. Their purpose was simply the carrying of cargo, safe and sure and slow. Already labourers were swarming about them, the work begun of loading all New Island's tribute into their accommodating holds.

The other two newcomers, however, were warships.
They were frigates, to be exact, which meant that each was somewhat smaller than the
Chloe,
with only two gun decks instead of
three – but they looked deadly nonetheless, possessing the air of swift hunting dogs set in charge over the docile herd of merchantmen. Both had visited Stone Port before, according to the gossip on the docks, and were named the
Severe
and the
Conquest.
And there was no mistaking their martial intent. With the
Chloe
stationed at one end of the wharves, the
Conquest
berthed at the other, and the
Severe
positioned in the middle, the three warships had all the harbour, and indeed the town itself, covered by the sweep of their guns.

But the occupation of Stone Port – as Dow came to regard it in the days that followed – was not just a matter of the fourteen ships. The fleet also brought with it close to five thousand sailors – five thousand sea-weary men who were due for shore leave. The officers, much fewer in number, were given the run of the Stone Port fortress for their rest and relaxation, at the governor's pleasure; but not the common seamen and gunners. These thousands of men, in their off watches, were loosed upon the alleyways, inns and bars of the lower town.

It was an invasion that transformed Stone Port, cramming its byways with the exotically garbed Ship Kings crews and filling the air with their accented shouts and laughter. The New Island folk (Dow could not help but notice how drab and small they suddenly looked in comparison) could scarcely move in their own streets, or drink in their own inns, so great was the crush. And yet Stone Port bore the inundation without complaint. There were no mutterings against the visitors, no harsh words, no brawling. The war had been lost long ago, and whatever the townsfolk might feel in their hearts about being overrun, they kept it well hidden.

And anyway, the Ship Kings brought with them one thing that all New Islanders welcomed unreservedly. That thing was
news
– news from the lands across the sea; a treasure to a people no longer able to travel. Dow, to his regret, seldom had the chance to hear such news direct from the sailors themselves, for his visits to Stone Port remained brief. But as the days went by and the crews roamed the town, the stories they told began to circulate all about Stone Port and eventually reached even across the channel to Stromner, where the villagers repeated them eagerly each night over their drinks in the inn.

There was, for instance, much talk of the Ship Kings' homeland. Dow soon learned that he'd been taught truly as a child; the Kingdoms did indeed consist of eleven separate realms, ruled by eleven kings, with one Sea Lord reigning over all. Alas, whether or not the Sea Lord really lived on a giant ship which never saw land, no one could say, for the visiting crews did not speak of it.

Despite their alliance, however, it seemed that old rivalries still lingered between the Ship Kings. That was why there were always eleven merchantmen in the fleets that came to Stone Port; each kingdom, jealous of its share of the tribute, sent a ship of its own to collect that share. Rumours spoke too of more urgent troubles. The current Sea Lord – the sixth in the line – was apparently old and unwell, and there was debate among the kings about the succession.

There was news also of the other two of the Four Isles. All his life, Dow had heard little of them beyond their names – Red Island and Whale Island, sometimes called the Twin Isles, as they were close neighbours. The most he knew was that they lay many weeks' voyage to the west (whereas the Kingdoms lay far to the east) and that they had fallen under the rule of the Ship Kings in the same war that had seen New Island conquered.

Now however he learned of the strange wonders to be found in these two distant lands. Red Island it seemed was a place of boiling lakes and burning mountains, where men dug deep in the earth in search of metals, or toiled in smithies to cast cannon for the Ship Kings. And Whale Island was a mass of jungle and swamp, where bizarre plants grew and where peculiar spirits were brewed, while the ocean all about was crowded with reefs, between which swam the great sea beasts that were hunted for their oil, and which gave the land its name.

It was even stranger to hear about the peoples of these islands. Peoples with their own ways and customs, and with their own cities and ports. Peoples who had fought alongside New Island during the Great War, and who laboured now, likewise, under the Ship Kings' sway. Peoples Dow would never meet. Were they content, he wondered, those faraway folk? Did they ever resist, or seek to rebel? Or were they as the New Islanders were – compliant in their defeat?

But of all the Ship Kings' news, of greatest interest to Dow was news of the
sea
. For although their merchantmen sailed mainly to carry cargo, and their warships sailed mainly in search of battle, still the deepest love of the Ship Kings was to sail for sailing's sake. Ever and again, it seemed, they would assemble a fleet and venture off into the wilds of the farthest ocean – far beyond the travelled waters that lay between the Four Isles – risking limb and life and ship, for no other reason than to explore to the very limits of the habitable world.

And what marvels they encountered! There were tales of storms that rose like fire-filled titans over the sea, and which set the waters sizzling and steaming, so furiously did they trample the ocean with lightning. There were tales of storms which blackened the entire sky and shrieked and howled for days on end, and which conjured waves that reared as high as the tallest masts. There were tales of storms that draped giant funnels down to the ocean, funnels that twisted and turned and danced enticingly around ships before devouring them.

There were tales of monstrous creatures in the deeps, as big as the biggest ship, and bigger still – some that, for all their size, were as slow and gentle as oxen; but others that were grappling, vicious things, attacking ships and dragging them to their deaths. And there were things that perhaps were not creatures at all, but which were just as feared. Tales spoke of glowing mists that hunted purposefully above the waves and engulfed ships, and which sent entire crews mad – or if not mad then overcome, sleeping one and all for days, so that when they awoke again they had drifted far from their course and were lost.

Even worse perils awaited those ships which voyaged the most distantly. If they ventured far enough north they met a permanent winter and entered the realm of the Unquiet Ice, where the sun scarcely rose and the skies were everlasting grey; where sails set solid and where giant platforms of ice rolled sullenly, and where eventually the ocean itself froze into a jagged mountain range that would crush any ship that strayed into its endless fjords. Some spoke of a warmer land and even cities that waited beyond the icy ranges, gained by some narrow passage, and others said they had seen fantastic lights glowing from across the mountains. Ah, but many were the craft that had been lost, seeking after such visions.

But most perilous of all, so the stories went, was to sail south. The sun rose higher there and the air grew ever warmer. For a time perhaps the sailing might be pleasant and the crews could work shirtless under the blue sky, but soon enough the sun would grow hot and men's skin would start to burn and peel, and there were no clouds and no rain, and a ship's water would run low. And if still a vessel pushed southwards, the winds would begin to weaken and fail. Faint-hearted captains – or perhaps they were wise – would turn their ships about at this point, for those that pressed on found eventually that they had sailed beyond the wind, and were becalmed. They had entered the Barrier Doldrums.

It was a name known to Dow even during his childhood. For although the Scribes taught that the world was round, and that by sailing east or west a ship might one day come back to where it began; they also taught that the same ship could not circle the world by going north or south. In the north there was the ice, and anyway, all paths narrowed northwards, for it was the top of the world. It was in the south that the paths widened as the globe grew fatter, but there all progress was blocked by the Barrier Doldrums, a region of never-ending calm and stultifying heat through which no ship had ever sailed. For how could one sail where the wind never blew, and where no current ever rippled the oily waters?

Oh, said the stories, many ships had sought to pass through over the years. But those that returned brought only horrid reports of heat and starvation and thirst, and of long weeks trapped unmoving upon a sea as heavy as molasses, or caught in vast swamps of seaweed that choked the surface, stinking unendurably. Crews had resorted to launching their boats to tow their ships back into zones where winds blew. Others, it was said, had towed their ships deeper in, hoping to come to the other side. But of these, none had ever been sighted again. What lay beyond, what lands, what wonders, nobody knew. The doldrums circled the waist of the world all the way around and hid forever the southern half of the globe.

It was to stories like these, and more besides, that Dow listened, rapt, as he ate and drank in his corner of the Stromner inn. They transported him completely, away from the smoky shadows of the bar and off to the wild open places where great storms raged and where fantastic monsters writhed and roared, to where freezing seas crackled and where pinnacles of ice toppled and fell, or to where the ocean turned as torpid and deadly as syrup. But the stories brought him suffering too, for the more of them he heard, the more the sea longing throbbed and ached in his chest, until it was like an actual pain, wringing at his heart.

For surely
this
was why he had left his home; to voyage as the Ship Kings voyaged, to see and experience the world's wonders for himself. It could not be that he was meant to rot the rest of his days in Stromner, while the Great Ocean waited through the Heads with such immense rewards for those brave enough to sail upon it. A way must be found to go there, somehow.

But in fact it had never looked less likely. Nathaniel – since their fight – barely spoke to Dow anymore, and had abandoned even the pretence of training him in sea craft. Worse, when they went fishing, they no longer set off alone into the emptiness at the centre of the bay, but ventured only to the nearest fishing grounds, where they trawled alongside the other Stromner boats. It was a punishment that stole away the one pleasure the work had ever held for Dow; those few moments sailing free across the Claw. Now he had nothing at all to look forward to in the day, only the dull grind of hauling nets, and then the slow run into Stone Port.

If only
, Dow found himself daydreaming. If only he had a boat of his own. Then he could simply set out through the Heads by himself to explore the world. Or – as mad as it sounded – if only he could go with the Ship Kings when the fleet set sail, to serve as a hand on one of their vessels.

But it could never be. The Ship Kings would not take him. It was not allowed. No New Islander, as far as Dow could discover, had served aboard their ships in decades – not since the prisoners of the Great War had been returned home, some seventy years previous, Nathaniel's father among them.

As for a boat of his own – well, even if, in his final extremity, he
stole
a boat and launched off, he would be lost as soon as he left sight of land. He knew not the secret of navigating across the open sea.

And that, it increasingly seemed to Dow, was the heart of the matter. Navigation. Consider the Ship Kings. They held dominion over the world by the force of their battleships, yes – but surely navigation was their true power, for what mattered the winning of battles or the exploration of distant oceans, if a ship could not find its way home again? If Dow was ever to escape the prison that Stromner and Nathaniel had built around him, navigation must be his key.

Oh, to be granted one glimpse of that mysterious way-finding device that the Ship Kings held on their high decks. Day by day, Dow became ever more convinced that if he could only steal a look at one of the secret instruments, then the ways of the ocean would be opened to him. He would not need Nathaniel then, or anyone else. He would need only a boat, and then he could be free
.