Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369)

by Brennan, Marie

  For those two days, the five of us huddled in Aekinitos’ cabin, safe from the battle on the decks but suffering in our own way. Every one of us was most miserably sick at some point, even those who had not previously had any trouble at sea. We had only hardtack and water to sustain us, for there was no hope of hot food in such a storm, and the cook was busy elsewhere regardless. The smell soon mounted to dreadful levels, from illness and sweat and the chamber pot in its little closet; the latter got emptied only once, when Jake defied the captain and crept out to fling its contents through a porthole. None of us got a wink of sleep, and if you have ever gone two days without rest, you will understand the kind of madness that overcomes you when you pass through exhaustion to another realm entirely.

  I was terrified, and nauseated, and furious with my utter inability to do anything. I almost wished Jake would collapse in tears; then at least I could busy myself with comforting him, which would give me the illusion of use. But my son, though afraid, was made of stuff too stern to oblige me. He said at intervals that the captain was a brilliant man who could overcome any storm, and occupied himself with comforting Abby, who was the most ill of us all. I take pride in his conduct, but it left me with nothing to do but endure.

  I could scarcely even converse with Tom and Suhail, the clamour of the storm was so great. Besides, what was there for us to speak of? We could not take refuge in discussing dragons or archaeology; it was impossible to maintain coherent thought for long in the chaos. We spoke in brief, elliptical turns about the conditions and what we might do to better them, but little more. After a time, Suhail began to sing quietly, I think to give himself something to focus on besides our circumstances. He had not much range, and the Akhian songs he sang (lullabies and children’s songs, I think) were unfamiliar to me, but the sound was comforting nonetheless.

  So for two days there was neither night nor day, but only the continual gloom, relieved by that single lantern, whose refilling provided brief moments of painstaking terror. Then, just as we began to tell ourselves that the winds were slackening, there came a dreadful, grinding shudder from below—and the Basilisk ceased to move.

  “What was that?” Abby cried.

  I met Tom’s eyes, and Suhail’s, and Jake’s. All four of us were thinking it, I believe, but I was the one who gave it voice. “We have run aground.”

  In a storm, this can be a death sentence. So long as the Basilisk ran freely, she could mitigate the force of the winds by giving in to them. Trapped against a sandbar or reef, however, she had no such defense. The storm would force her farther into the obstacle, until one or more things gave way: the masts, perhaps, or the hull.

  The loss of our masts would cripple us, but the shattering of the hull could kill us.

  “The bilge,” Tom said, and Suhail nodded. Then they were out the door, and I only just caught Jake when he tried to follow. He fought against me, but ship’s boy or no, he would not be of much use now. If the hull had cracked, the men would need to bail against our sinking, and Jake was not strong enough for that.

  (In fact the men had been bailing the whole time, taking shifts at the hand-cranked pumps that siphoned water from the bilge and disposed of it outside once more. I did not know then that the planking of a ship flexes quite a bit even when intact, and a storm may cause it to spring any number of leaks. But the point still stands that running aground increased the danger.)

  Jake, Abby, and I waited in the cabin, listening to the Basilisk groan. I understand why men speak of ships as if they are alive; we could feel her pain in the vibration of her boards. But the winds were slackening, and I was just beginning to hope that we might yet survive this when I heard a great crack from above, and then a crash that shook the whole stern.

  It was the mizzenmast: the very same pole whose presence I had cursed for consuming so much space where it ran through our tiny cabin. Weakened by two days of the storm, it had broken at last, slamming down across the decks with all its rigging in tow. It knocked one man overboard and broke the captain’s leg. But as wounds go, the Basilisk could have suffered much worse.

  At the time we did not know that. All the three of us knew was that something dreadful had happened, and more such things might follow. We stayed huddled in the cabin until Tom came to the door and said, “The storm is passing. You can come out now.”

  Emerging from that dark little room after so long was like being born again. The wind, still stiff, was flogging the tail ends of the clouds into the distance; the clearing sky was pink with dawn light. We came on deck through a hatch amidships, for the one closest to the cabin had been blocked by the wreckage of the mizzenmast. Around us was choppy, white-capped sea—and islands.

  They reared up from the waves like solid shadows, broad shapes furred with trees. As the light grew stronger, the darkness turned to emerald green, and the edges gleamed like pearls: sandy beaches, much spotted with seaweed and fallen palm branches after the storm, but radiant in the dawn. They were not so very far away, either. Suhail and some of the others could swim to shore, if it proved necessary.

  We did not need to abandon ship, though. The Basilisk was sorely damaged by her encounter with the reef, but not sinking, at least not at present. Aekinitos was soon on deck once more; he could not walk, but the doctor had set his leg, and from a throne of crates the captain directed the efforts of his men. Their first concern was to cut away the wreckage of the mizzenmast, which was dragging in the surf and causing the Basilisk to shift uneasily; then they took stock of our losses.

  At least, they began to. Not long after the mast splashed free, Jake tugged at my sleeve and pointed outward. “Mama, look.”

  I was already looking, but too high. One promontory above the sea had an oddly regular shape; there were no trees there, and the corner looked suspiciously square, as if someone had built a platform of stone. Jake directed my attention lower, to the water. Two canoes—no, three—were rounding the base of the promontory and making all speed toward us.

  So these islands were inhabited. It was no particular surprise; whether it would be a blessing or a curse remained to be seen. We certainly needed assistance, but would these people be inclined to give it?

  I hastened to notify Aekinitos. He called his men away from all but the most vital of tasks, and they surreptitiously brought out their guns and cutlasses. The captain did not want to present a hostile face, but he did wish to be ready in case it was needed. I recalled Jake to my side, and waited to see what would happen.

  Two of the canoes stopped at a little distance, their rowers occasionally dipping oars into the water to maintain their position against the waves. The third circled the Basilisk, no doubt taking stock of our condition. Then it returned to its companions, and the men aboard conferred.

  They were of course Puian, clad in loincloths, with tattoos marking their faces in patterns whose significance I could not decipher. None of them were small. Puians in general are a large people, tall of stature and generous of flesh, but these fellows were robust even by the standards of the region. From the crow’s nest of the mainmast, one of the sailors called down in a hushed voice, “They have weapons. Slings, spears—looks like clubs, too, with stones or teeth or summat in them.” He did not say, though, that they held the weapons in hand.

  One of the two canoes that had waited now came forward a bit, the oarsmen steering it with expert skill. In the bow, a man stood up and called out in a strong voice.

  I caught only some of what followed. He was not speaking simplified trade Atau, but rather the dialect common to those islands. Two of the sailors and Suhail spoke in low voices to sort out their translations, then conveyed the result to Aekinitos. To begin with, the man in the canoe had said, “I wish to speak with your chief.”

  Aekinitos gestured for Mr. Dolin and Cranby to help him. The rest of the crew crowded to the rail, obscuring the view from the water; they did not clear away until Aekinitos had been carried forward and propped against a barrel, so that his crippled condit
ion would not immediately show. Then he nodded to one of the interpreters, who called an introduction down.

  In many fits and starts, through confusions of dialect and the elaborately flowery speech Puians affect when they need to be formal, Aekinitos told them that we were survivors of the great storm, and our ship was trapped on the reef.

  Their answer, when it came, was startling. “You are not Yelangese. Are you Scirling?”

  The captain was exhausted from the storm and in no small amount of pain, with his leg only recently splinted, but he did not betray surprise by so much as a blink. “Some of my crew are Scirling,” he answered in even tones. “But I am Nichaean. We hail from all over.”

  I was glad not to be standing where the men in the canoes could see me. My confusion was mirrored in Tom’s eyes. “That didn’t sound friendly,” I whispered to him.

  He shook his head. “Trouble with the Yelangese—that I can see,” he murmured back. “Raengaui and some of the other islands are in conflict with them, after all. But what has Scirland done to offend the people here?”

  There were possibilities. A belligerent trading expedition; sheluhim come to proselytize the Magisterial faith; even a hunter like Velloin, though the Puian region as a rule boasts little in the way of large game. Someone might have come poaching sea-serpent teeth, though.

  Aekinitos was not being entirely truthful with the islanders. He might be Nichaean, but the Basilisk was commissioned as a Royal Survey Ship, under the authority of the Scirling crown. I cast a surreptitious glance upward and saw that the Scirling flag no longer flew from the masthead; I later learned it had been carried away in the storm. There was nothing to identify us as hailing from that country, then, in more than an individual sense.

  The conversation had continued while I pursued these thoughts. Aekinitos assured the men below of our peaceful intent, and begged for assistance in repairing and resupplying the Basilisk.

  It pained him to beg, I could see. A captain is a king aboard his vessel, but the simple fact of the matter was that we had only two options here: to ask for what we needed, or to take it by force. He was not innately inclined to the latter, and furthermore pragmatism constrained him. We did not know how many people were in this island chain, but they were sure to outnumber us, even with the advantage of our guns.

  Fortunately the islanders, once assured of our neutral origin, were willing to let us come ashore and speak with their chief. They had knowledge of guns, and told us to leave ours on the ship, which Aekinitos agreed to with reluctance. Then they stood their canoes clear while we lowered one of the ship’s boats, into which we loaded a slew of other people: Aekinitos, Mr. Dolin, four other sailors, myself, Tom, Suhail, Abby—and Jake.

  You may question the decision to bring Jake along. To be quite blunt, it was a calculated defense on our part. In most parts of the world, the Broken Sea not excepted, a group composed entirely of grown men gives a different impression than one that includes two women and a child. I even thought—too late to change my attire—that I should have put on a dress, to reinforce my harmless civilian qualities. But in any event, I calculated that my son would be safer in the long run if I brought him with me than if I left him on the ship.

  And so, escorted by the trio of canoes, we came ashore at Keonga.

  * * *

  The beach opposite the Basilisk had seemed all but deserted, apart from the rock platform I glimpsed on the promontory. It turned out this was because we had run aground on the wrong part of the island.

  Just on the other side of the promontory was a thriving little village. At least, I thought of it in those terms; not until later did I understand this was the largest settlement on the island, most of the population being scattered in farms connected by footpaths. Here stood the chiefly residence and those of the priests, who carried out their ceremonies on the platform I had seen, which was a great temple.

  Their position on the far side of the promontory had given them a degree of shelter from the storm, but not enough to escape damage. We saw many huts without roofs, their thatch having been torn off and strewn across the beach. Some of the weaker trees had been downed, and one of those had crushed a storehouse. There were some injuries among the common folk, for although they know these storms well and take what precautions they can, few structures can stand against such force. (The chief and his priests, I later heard, had sheltered in an old lava tube some distance up the slopes, which I would visit in due course.)

  We landed on the beach and were taken toward an open space before a large building. The space was marked with stones along its edge, and the posts and boards of the building were splendidly carved. We were made to wait outside that stone border, while a crowd gathered to gawk at us. I took some comfort in seeing women and children among this group as well, though it seemed virtually every man was armed in some fashion, even if only with a knife.

  “Do we have any notion where we are?” I asked Aekinitos. He had been given a large bundle to sit on; any attempt to hide his injured state became impossible the moment he left the Basilisk.

  He snorted. “Do you think I ceased to pay attention, simply because of a storm? If I do not miss my guess, we are in Keonga.”

  I had seen that name on his charts. This was not a place we had intended to go; it lay on the fringes of the Raengaui island cluster, and was therefore judged too far out of our way to be worth visiting, especially as the waters around it were said to be especially treacherous. Before I could ask Aekinitos more, however, someone began to chant in a loud voice, taking my attention away from the captain entirely.

  The first greeters we saw did not look welcoming in the least. Three men, their loincloth-clad bodies magnificently tattooed, stamped toward us brandishing weapons. I think the only thing that prevented us from misreading their intention was the obviously stylized nature of their movements: they hammered their feet against the ground, slapped their chests and legs, and contorted their faces in terrifying expressions. “Hold your ground,” Aekinitos growled. “It is only a test.”

  I had cause to be glad of the discipline with which his sailors followed him, for he seemed to be right. Although the men threatened us for at least a full minute, they made no move to attack—and then, just as suddenly as they had begun, it was done. They set leaves on the ground before us and retreated, their expressions now watchful. The chant shifted tone, and we were beckoned forward, into the marked space of the courtyard.

  Others came out of the building then. It was not difficult to pick the chief out from among them. He was flanked by two men carrying great plumy things on sticks—overgrown cousins of fly-whisks, which seemed to be symbols of the chief’s status—and wore a splendid feather cape that would have been the envy of any Coyahuac lord. Moreover, like rulers the world over, he was accompanied by an entourage of other resplendent people, whose presence announced very clearly his importance.

  He walked with measured steps and halted some distance from us. Then, in a fashion that reminded me strongly of the oba of Bayembe, he spoke through one of his heralds. “Who are you, that have come to the shores of my island?”

  We made a sorry lot in comparison. No member of our delegation had changed their clothes in days, and the only wash-water anyone had seen was the rain that sluiced down on the sailors. Furthermore, the man who spoke for us was exercising all his will to remain upright on a barkcloth-wrapped bundle, with his splinted leg obvious for all to see. But we could not leave Aekinitos behind; what we knew of Puian customs said it was vital to bring the most important person among us to converse with the chief, no matter what state he might be in.

  It was a mark of the improved relations between Aekinitos and Suhail that the latter was permitted to speak for us—though not, of course, without direction. Suhail was unquestionably the best linguist among us, but that would not necessarily have swayed Aekinitos two months ago.

  He introduced our group, and received the entire recitation of the chief’s lineage in return. This, of c
ourse, was designed to impress upon us the mighty nature of the man we faced, and our own insignificance in return. I could not repeat the whole thing for you if I tried; his given name seemed to be Pa’oarakiki, and that is what we called him amongst ourselves. We later learned that he headed one of the greatest chiefly lineages in the archipelago, second only to that of the king, who ruled the neighbouring island of Aluko’o. Indeed, his mother’s sister had been wife to the current king’s uncle, which make Pa’oarakiki a great man indeed.

  Undoubtedly he had already been told about our troubles, but Suhail repeated them now for his benefit. I could not follow half of what he said; not only was he endeavouring to describe the situation of the Basilisk, which involved a great deal of technical terminology I did not recognize even before Suhail found a way to express it in the Atau pidgin, but my exhausted brain simply lacked the will to struggle with a foreign language in the first place. My wandering gaze took in the battered state of the village, then studied the green slopes of the volcano above us, in which I could begin to pick out the signs of farms and the occasional hut.

  And, in the air above the trees, a flock of shapes whose recognizable outlines immediately woke me from my stupor.

  I did not realize I had made a little exclamation of pleasure until everyone turned to stare at me. Then I flushed hot and stammered out an apology. “I did not mean to interrupt. It is only that I saw a flight of fire-lizards up there.”

  I said this in Scirling, which meant of course that it had to be translated for the islanders. Then someone else spoke up, in a clear enough tone that I could understand. “What is your interest in them?”

  The speaker was a large, deep-voiced woman in the king’s entourage. She seemed to be about my age, perhaps a little older, and she was looking at me with a sharp expression. I surmised that she had some special position in his court, for her appearance was odd: the tattoos on her face exaggerated her eyes and her mouth, the barkcloth draped over one shoulder was thick and bulky, and the skirt wrapped about her lower half was extravagantly padded at the hips.