by Robin Hobb
‘We all make mistakes, my dear,’ Ophelia assured her gently. ‘I wish all of them could be righted as easily as this. Of course we will get you back on board your own ship. Of course we will.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’ It was like being able to take a deep breath again, or to stand up straight after bearing a heavy burden for a long time. She had never grasped that liveships might share such feelings for one another. Her individual bond with the Vivacia had been all she had perceived. She had never paused to think that in time her ship might develop friendships with others like her. That she and Vivacia might have allies beyond each other.
Ophelia gave her throaty bawd’s chuckle. ‘Well, you still have to answer one question for me.’
Althea shook her head and smiled. ‘You have asked me far more than three questions.’
‘I think not!’ Ophelia declared haughtily. ‘I recall only that I asked you your name. The rest just all came out freely. You spilled your guts, girl.’
‘Well, perhaps I did. No, wait. I clearly recall that you asked me why I hadn’t come to the liveships for help.’
‘That was not a question, that was just a conversational gambit. But even if I give you that, you still owe me a question.’
Althea was inclined to feel generous. ‘Ask away, then.’
Ophelia smiled, and a bright spark of mischief came into her eyes. For a second she bit the tip of her tongue between her white teeth. Then she asked quickly, ‘Who is that dark-eyed man who gives you such… stimulating dreams?’
32
STORM
‘LET’S TRY THIS,’ Wintrow suggested. He pushed her fetter as far up her skinny shank as it would go. He took a strip of rag and lightly wrapped it around the girl’s raw ankle. Then he slid her fetter back over the top of it. ‘Is that better?’
She didn’t speak. The moment he took his hand away, she began working her ankle against the fetter again.
‘No, no,’ he said quietly. He touched her ankle and she stopped. But she did not speak and she did not look at him. She never did. A day or so more, and she’d be permanently crippled. He had no herbs or oils, no real medicines or bandaging. All he had was seawater and rags. And she was gradually scoring her own tendons. She seemed unable to stop herself from working against the fetter.
‘Give it up,’ a voice from the darkness suggested sourly. ‘She’s crazy. She don’t know what she’s doing, and she’s going to die before we get to Chalced anyway. You washing her and bandaging her is only going to make it take longer. Let her go, if that’s her only way out of here.’
Wintrow lifted up his candle and peered into the gloom. He could not decide who had spoken. In this part of the hold, he couldn’t even stand up straight. The slaves chained here were even more restricted. Yet the rolling of the Vivacia as she cut through the heavy seas kept them in constant motion, flesh against wood. They averted their eyes from his dim candlelight, blinking as if they stared at the sun. He slipped further down the line, trying to avoid the worst of the filth. Most of the slaves were silent and impassive to his passage, all of their strength invested in endurance. He saw a man half-sitting up in his chains, blinking as he tried to meet Wintrow’s eyes. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked quietly.
‘Do you have the key to these things?’ one man to the side of him answered sarcastically, while another one demanded, ‘How come you get to move about?’
‘So that I can keep you alive,’ Wintrow answered evasively. He was a coward. He feared that if they knew he was the captain’s son, they’d try to kill him. ‘I’ve a bucket of seawater and rags, if you want to wash yourself.’
‘Give me the rag,’ the first man commanded him gruffly. Wintrow sopped it in water and passed it to him. Wintrow had expected him to wipe his face and hands. So many slaves seemed to take comfort from that bare ritual of cleanliness. Instead he shifted as far as he could to put the rag against the bared shoulder of an inert man next to him. ‘Here you go, Rat-bait,’ he said, almost jokingly. He sponged tenderly at a raw and swollen lump on the man’s shoulder. The man made no response.
‘Rat-bait here got bitten hard a few nights ago. I caught the rat and we shared it. But he ain’t been feeling well since.’ His eyes met Wintrow’s for a glancing moment. ‘Think you could get him moved out of here?’ he asked in a more genteel tone. ‘If he’s got to die in chains, at least let him die in the light and air, on deck.’
‘It’s night-time,’ Wintrow heard himself say. Foolish words.
‘Is it?’ the man asked in wonder. ‘Still. The cool air.’
‘I’ll ask,’ Wintrow said uncomfortably, but he wasn’t sure he truly would. The crew left Wintrow to himself. He ate apart from them, he slept apart from them. Some of the men he had known earlier in the voyage would watch him sometimes, their faces a mixture of pity and disgust at what he had become. The newer hands picked up in Jamaillia treated him as they would any slave. If he came near them, they complained of his stench and kicked or pushed him away. No. The less attention he got from the crew, the simpler his life was. He had come to think of the deck and the rigging as ‘outside’. Here ‘inside’ was his new world. It was a place of thick smells, of chains caked with filth and humans meshed in them. The times when he went on deck to refill his bucket were like trips to a foreign world. There men moved freely, they shouted and sometimes laughed, and the wind and rain and sun touched their faces and bared arms. Never before had such things seemed so wondrous to Wintrow. He could have stayed abovedecks, he could have insinuated himself back into the routine as ship’s boy. But he did not. Having been belowdecks, he could not forget or ignore what was there. So each day he rose as the sun went down, filled his bucket and got his washed-out rags, and went down into the slave-holds. He offered them the small comfort of washing with seawater. Freshwater would have been far better, but there was precious little of that to spare. Seawater was better than nothing. He cleaned sores they could not reach. He did not get to every slave, every day. There were far too many of them for that. But he did what he could, and when he curled up to sleep by day, he slept deeply.
He touched the leg of the inert man. His skin was hot. It would not be long.
‘Would you damp this again, please?’
Something in the man’s tones and accent were oddly familiar. Wintrow pondered it as he sloshed the rag in the small amount of seawater remaining in his bucket. There was no pretending the rag and water were clean any more. Only wet. The man took it, and wiped the brow and face of his neighbour. He folded the rag anew, and wiped his own face and hands. ‘My thanks to you,’ he said as he handed the rag back.
With a shivering up his back, Wintrow caught it. ‘You come from Marrow, don’t you? Near Kelpiton Monastery?’
The man smiled oddly, as if Wintrow’s words both warmed and pained him. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, I do.’ In a lower voice, he amended it to, ‘I did. Before I was sent to Jamaillia.’
‘I was there, at Kelpiton!’ Wintrow whispered, but he felt the words as a cry. ‘I lived in the monastery, I was to be a priest. I worked in the orchards, sometimes.’ He moistened the rag and handed it back again.
‘Ah, the orchards.’ The man’s voice went far as he gently wiped his companion’s hands. ‘In the spring, when the trees blossomed, they were like fountains of flowers. White and pink, the fragrance like a blessing.’
‘You could hear the bees, but it was as if the trees themselves were humming. Then, a week later when the blossoms fell, the ground was pink and white with them…’
‘And the trees fogged with green as the first leaves came out,’ the other man whispered. ‘Sa save me,’ he moaned suddenly. ‘Are you a demon come to torment me, or a messenger-spirit?’
‘Neither,’ Wintrow said. He suddenly felt ashamed. ‘I’m only a boy with a bucket of water and a rag.’
‘Not a priest of Sa?’
‘Not any longer.’
‘The road to the priesthood may wander, but once upon it, no man
leaves it.’ The slave’s voice had taken on a teaching cadence, and Wintrow knew he heard ancient scripture.
‘But I have been taken away from the priesthood.’
‘No man can be taken away, no man can leave it. All lives lead towards Sa. All are called to a priesthood.’
Some moments later, Wintrow realized he was sitting very still in the dark, breathing. The candle had guttered out, and he had not been aware of it. His mind had followed the man’s words, questioning, wondering. All men called to a priesthood. Even Torg, even Kyle Haven? Not all calls were heeded, not all doors were opened.
He did not need to tell the other man he was back. He was aware of him. ‘Go, priest of Sa,’ the man said quietly in the darkness. ‘Work the small mercies you can, plead for us, beg comfort for us. And when you have the chance to do more, Sa will give you the courage. I know he will.’ Wintrow felt the rag pressed back into his hand.
‘You were a priest, too,’ Wintrow asked softly.
‘I am a priest. One who would not sway to false doctrine. No man is born to be a slave. That, I believe, is what Sa would never permit.’ He cleared his throat and asked quietly, ‘Do you believe that?’
‘Of course.’
In a conspiratorial voice, the man observed, ‘They bring us food and water but once a day. Other than that, and you, no one comes near us. If I had anything metal, I could work at these chains. It need not be a tool that would be missed. Anything metal you could find in any moment you are unwatched.’
‘But… even if you were out of your chains, what could you do? One man against so many?’
‘If I can sever the long chain, many of us could move.’
‘But what would you do?’ Wintrow asked in a sort of horror.
‘I don’t know. I’d trust to Sa. He brought you to me, didn’t he?’ He seemed to hear the boy’s hesitation. ‘Don’t think about it. Don’t plan it. Don’t worry. Sa will put opportunity in your path, and you will see it and act.’ He paused. ‘I only ask that you beg that Kelo here be allowed to die on deck. If you dare.’
‘I dare,’ Wintrow heard himself reply. Despite the darkness and stench all around him, he felt as if a tiny light had been rekindled inside him. He would dare. He would ask. What could they do to him for asking? Nothing worse than what they’d already done. His courage, he thought wonderingly. He’d found his courage again. He groped for his bucket and rag in the darkness. ‘I have to go. But I will come back.’
‘I know you will,’ the other man replied quietly.
*
‘So. You wanted to see me?’
‘Something’s wrong. Something is very wrong.’
‘What?’ Gantry demanded wearily. ‘Is it the serpents again? I’ve tried, Vivacia. Sa knows I’ve tried to drive them off. But throwing rocks at them in the morning does me no good if I have to dump bodies over the side in the afternoon. I can’t make them go away. You’ll have to just ignore them.’
‘They whisper to me,’ she confided uneasily.
‘The serpents talk to you?’
‘No. Not all of them. But the white one,’ she turned to look at him and her eyes were tormented. ‘Without words, without sound. He whispers to me, and he urges… unspeakable things.’
Gantry felt a terrible urge to laugh. Unspeakable things uttered without words. He pushed it away from himself. It wasn’t funny, not really. Sometimes it seemed to him that nothing had ever really been funny in his whole life.
‘I can’t do anything about them,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried and tried.’
‘I know. I know. I have to deal with it myself. I can. I shall. But tonight it’s not the serpents. It’s something else.’
‘What?’ he asked patiently. She was mad. He was almost sure of it. Mad, and he had helped to make her that way. Sometimes he thought he should just ignore her when she spoke, as if she were one of the slaves begging him for simple mercy. At other times he thought he had a duty to listen to her ramblings and groundless fears. Because what he had come to call madness was her inability to ignore the contained misery caged within her holds. He had helped to put that misery there. He had installed the chains, he had brought out the slaves, with his own hands he had fettered men and women in the dark below the decks he trod. He could smell the stench of their entrapment and hear their cries. Perhaps he was the one who was truly mad, for a key hung at his belt and he did nothing.
‘I don’t know what it is. But it’s something, something dangerous.’ She sounded like a child with a high fever, peopling the dark with fearsome creatures. There was an unspoken plea in her words. Make it go away.
‘It’s just the storm coming. We all feel it, the seas are getting higher. But you’ll be fine, you’re a fine ship. A bit of weather isn’t going to bother you,’ he encouraged her.
‘No. I’d welcome a storm, to wash some of the stench away. It’s not the storm I fear.’
‘I don’t know what to do for you.’ He hesitated, and then asked his usual question. ‘Do you want me to find Wintrow and bring him to you?’
‘No. No, leave him where he is.’ She sounded distracted when she spoke of him, as if the topic pained her and she wished to get away from it.
‘Well. If you think of anything I can do for you, you let me know.’ He started to turn away from her.
‘Gantry!’ she called hastily. ‘Gantry, wait!’
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘I told you to get on another ship. You remember that, don’t you? That I told you to get on another ship.’
‘I remember it,’ he assured her unwillingly. ‘I remember it.’
Again he turned to go, only to have a slight form step out in front of him suddenly. He startled back, suppressing a cry. A heartbeat later he recognized Wintrow. The night had made him seem insubstantial in his stained rags, almost like a wraith. The boy was gaunt, his face as pale as any slave’s save for the tattoo that crawled over his cheek. The smell of the slave-hold clung to him, so that Gantry stepped back from him without thinking. He did not like to see Wintrow at any time, let alone in the dark, alone. The boy himself had become an accusation to him, a living reminder of all Gantry chose to ignore. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded gruffly, but he heard in his own voice a sort of cry.
The boy spoke simply. ‘One of the slaves is dying. I’d like to bring him out on the deck.’
‘What’s the point of that, if he’s dying anyway?’ He spoke harshly, to keep from speaking desperately.
‘What’s the point of not doing it?’ Wintrow asked quietly. ‘Once he’s dead, you’ve got to bring him up on deck anyway to get rid of his body. Why not do it now, and at least let him die where the air is cool and clean?’
‘Clean? Have you no nose left? There’s nowhere on this ship that smells clean any more.’
‘Not to you, perhaps. But he might breathe easier up here.’
‘I can’t just drag a slave up here on deck and dump him. I have no one to watch him.’
‘I’ll watch him,’ Wintrow offered evenly. ‘He’s no threat to anyone. His fever is so high that he’s just going to lie there until he dies.’
‘Fever?’ Gantry asked more sharply. ‘He’s one of the map-faces, then?’
‘No. He’s in the forward hold.’
‘How’d he get fever? We’ve only had fever among the map-faces before this.’ He spoke angrily as if it were Wintrow’s fault.
‘A rat bit him. The man chained to him thinks that is what started it.’ Wintrow hesitated. ‘Perhaps we should remove him from the others, just in case.’
Gantry snorted. ‘You play on my fears, to get me to do what you want.’
Wintrow looked at him steadily. ‘Can you give me a real reason why we should not bring the poor wretch onto the deck to die?’
‘I don’t have the men to move him just now. The seas are heavy, a storm is brewing. I want my full watch on deck in case I need them. We’ve a tricky bit of channel coming up, and when a storm breaks here, a man has to be ready.’
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‘If you give me the key, I’ll bring him up on deck myself.’
‘You can’t haul a grown man up from the forward hold by yourself.’
‘I’ll have another slave help me.’
‘Wintrow…’ Gantry began impatiently.
‘Please,’ Vivacia interceded softly. ‘Please. Bring the man up here.’
Gantry could not say why he didn’t want to give in. A simple bit of mercy he could offer, but he wanted to hold it back. Why? Because if this small act of taking pity on a dying man was the right thing to do, then… He pushed the thought away from him. He was mate on this vessel, he had his job, and that was to run the ship as his captain saw fit. It wasn’t his place to decide that all of it was wrong. Even if he faced that thought, even if he said aloud, ‘this is wrong!’ what could one man do about it?
‘You said if there was anything you could do for me, I should let you know,’ the ship reminded him.
He glanced up at the night sky, shrouded in gathering clouds. If Vivacia decided to be obstinate, she could double their work through this storm. He didn’t want to cross her just now.
‘If the seas get any heavier, we’ll be taking water over the deck,’ he warned them both.
‘I don’t think it will matter to him,’ Wintrow said.
‘Sar!’ Gantry declared with feeling. ‘I can’t give you my keys, boy, nor permission to bring a healthy slave up on deck. Come on. If I have to do this to keep the ship happy, I’ll do it myself. But let’s be quick about it and get it over.’
He raised his voice in a shout. ‘Comfrey! Keep an eye on things here, I’m going below. Sing out if you need me!’
‘Aye, sir!’
‘Lead the way,’ he told Wintrow gruffly. ‘If there’s fever in the forward hold, I suppose I’d better see for myself.’
*
Wintrow was silent as he led the way. Having made his request of Gantry, he could think of nothing more to say to the man. He was painfully conscious of the differences between them now. Gantry, his father’s right hand and trusted advisor was as far as could be from Wintrow, the slave and disgraced son. As he made his way into the crowded forward hold, he felt as if he led a stranger into his private nightmare.