And now Toper Maggie shifted again to lean close over the bed, her breath warm on Susan’s face, and quite free of whisky.
‘And here’s the thing, girl. Long tradition, passed down from blinded woman to blinded woman, declares that the first words a victim of the fever speaks after awakening will prove to be the truest prophecy of her life. My first words certainly were, and the three women who trained me always insisted that the same had been true for them. So now is your moment – you must search within yourself for foresight, even though you are not even a proper listener yet, and let it speak through you, so that I might hear.’
Susan stiffened in surprise and unease. A prophecy? She was supposed to have a foreseeing right now? It was ridiculous.
And yet …
She put her unbelief aside a moment, and closing her eyes (not that she needed to do that anymore) tried to look inwards, searching within herself, whatever those words meant.
Was there an intuition waiting there? A premonition? An uncanny certainty about the future? No … she was miserable and frightened, that was all. She didn’t want to know the future. She only wanted her sight back. And to go home.
‘You mustn’t fight it, child,’ Maggie urged.
An upwelling of resentment filled Susan. No – she would not be part of this nonsense. She was no prophet, and Toper Maggie wasn’t one either – the blind woman had invented the whole thing. She was either mad, or a drunkard after all, and Susan would not waste her life imprisoned with such a creature here in this horrible house of the blind.
‘Leave me alone,’ she demanded. ‘I can’t foresee anything and I never will. And I’m not going to stay here. I’m going home.’
And why shouldn’t she? She might be blind, but that didn’t mean all normal existence had to end! True, she could no longer hope for great things in Stone Port or Lonsmouth – but there was still a decent life to be lived here in Stromner. There was still useful work she could do, and there could still be love with a boy, and marriage, and children …
She added, ‘And why isn’t my mother here? She would never leave me alone like this with you! You’ve kept her away deliberately!’
But Toper Maggie would make no such admission. ‘Poor child, of course I haven’t kept your mother away. She could have been here all along if she’d wanted. But folk fear the blindness fever too much. Even mothers. And no matter how much your parents might love you still, they know how it must be from now on. You can’t go back to them. They would not take you. Blind women live in the Blind Women’s House, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘But I’m not like you …’
‘You are, you know. Oh, I hear it clearly enough in your voice – you dream still of the life that your friends will lead. You dream of husbands and children. But that can never be. No boy will want you with those eyes – and even if one did, you will never have children. For the blinding fever inflicts one other terrible hurt; its victims remain forever barren. You are sterile now. You will never be a mother.’
A vast sensation of loss, even darker than her blindness, froze Susan’s heart. Nothing? She was to be left with nothing at all?
‘Never mind,’ Maggie soothed. ‘There are other pleasures. You’ll accept all this in time.’
The fury bloomed in Susan again, the grief and the fear. She would not accept it.
‘You want a foretelling?’ she barked, seeking now only to wound the blind woman as badly as she herself was wounded. ‘Very well then, here’s what I foretell. You say that no trouble will come to Stromner in the days before you die? Then I say that before I die, trouble tenfold will visit this place.’
She searched wildly about for some disaster dire enough to match her anger – and remembered sitting on East Head, looking down to the channel, even as the fever grew in her. Yes, that would do!
‘The great maelstrom itself will return,’ she declared, ‘and rage fearsomely in the Rip.’ But no – even that didn’t sound bad enough. ‘Not merely once in my lifetime,’ she rushed on, ‘but twice, the second time even worse than the first!’
Toper Maggie drew in a sharp breath, but before the blind woman could speak, Susan, in her rage, hurled another taunt.
‘And Stromner will know terrible days. It will lie under a curse and its people will flee and the Hold Hall will stand empty. And that still won’t be the very worst thing. In the end another war will come, more dreadful even than the Great War, and Stromner will be ruined, and Stone Port will burn, and Lonsmouth too, and all New Island will be torn asunder and laid waste. There! That’s what I foretell – the return of the maelstrom and the end of everything!’
‘Child, child!’ Toper Maggie protested. To Susan’s delight, she actually sounded afraid now. ‘Think of what you’re saying.’
‘I don’t need to think,’ Susan mocked. ‘The foresight is upon me. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? And one last thing – no matter what you say the fever has done to me, I will be a mother one day.’
‘It’s impossible.’
‘I will be!’ shrieked Susan, rearing up. Then she fell back on the pillow, gasping.
Great rings of dull fire seemed to burn and spin in the black night sky that was her sightlessness.
The blind woman fetched a huge, trembling sigh. ‘Well, there it is, sure enough. And yes, I asked for it, true – if not for a telling so awful. I can only thank the oceans I won’t be alive to see it.’
And that at least was of some satisfaction to Susan. She felt no guilt about telling such outrageous lies. If the old witch wanted to believe them, and to be frightened by them, then let her!
But Maggie no longer sounded frightened, only sad, as if the thing was beyond arguing. ‘I mourn for Stromner, and for all New Island, that such horrors will come to pass. But I doubt you not, lass. You speak with true sight, whether you know it or not.
‘And yet one thing puzzles me. If indeed you are one day to be called Mother, then I can only guess that it will be a name bestowed in mockery, for though you will live to a great age, you will never have children of your own – in that, I now foretell. But you have called that name upon yourself, and so it must be – Mother Gale you will become, one day.’
Mother Gale …
A chill cooled Susan, her anger quenched all at once. Why did that name pierce her so?
‘But enough,’ said Toper Maggie, matter-of-fact once more. ‘You need to eat, and your mother will want to be told that you have survived the worst, so that she may come and see you.’
The dread still cold in her, Susan could feel the blind woman’s hands working at the bindings on her wrists. Her arms fell free.
‘There is no need of these now – you have passed beyond disbelief in your blindness. Touch your eyes if you must, but once you are satisfied there is no trickery, do not rub them. They are tender still, and you’ll only make them worse.’
Susan made no move to touch her eyes. She felt sick after her outburst – and haunted by misgivings that she’d defied something that should not be defied, and so called doom down upon her own head. Mother Gale. The name rang like a funeral bell.
‘I go now, young Susan,’ said Toper Maggie. ‘You will be alone, but only briefly. Should you need it, there is a pan below the bed, and a cane is resting by your right hand, should you seek to rise – but I don’t advise it. There will be time enough to learn the use of the stick in the days ahead.’
A cane, thought Susan. Yes, she would need a cane now, just like Maggie herself. A stick to tap her way along, dead eyes staring …
The front door of the house slammed shut before Susan even realised that Toper Maggie had left the bedside. A stark silence fell, the silence of an empty house she did not know at all.
But then, gradually, sounds came to her over the beating of her heart. The crackle of a fire nearby, the scrape of a branch maybe on the roof above, the low moan of the winter wind outside. And more distantly – the hammer of wood upon wood, from a boatshed perhaps, and very faint the l
aughter of children somewhere, playing. Everyday sounds, the muttered rhythm of Stromner, going about its day. Peaceful – and long to stay peaceful, if Toper Maggie was to be believed. But after that …
Susan sat up slowly, and lifted her fingers to touch her face. She felt her cheek, her lips and finally, very gently, her eyes. They were there. Unshielded. Unhindered. And totally unseeing.
She could not help it. She pressed harder upon the orbs – and pain flared, agonising. No light came, but again it was as if the pain formed a shape in her mind, a great wheel spinning, red in the dark.
No, not a wheel, but a vortex, lines whirling and spiralling in upon themselves. A whirlpool, slow and vast.
She lowered her hands. For the first time since awakening she knew a fear that was nothing to do with her blindness. It would not happen for many years – until after Toper Maggie was dead, and Susan herself was old. But she believed it now. The maelstrom, a second war, the end of the world.
It was really coming.
Susan Gale folded her hands upon her lap, and closed her eyes to hide their whiteness from the empty room. She cast her head forward, so that her long dark hair fell in strands over her face.
Then she began to listen in earnest.
THE WRECK OF THE BENT WING
PART ONE
The command was delivered on the eve of the fleet’s departure, the message borne by a boat flying the royal colours; it drew alongside the Bent Wing just as the sun was setting over the Golden Millpond.
Captain Altona received the letter duly, and noted with some surprise the Sea Lord’s official seal on the envelope. Upon breaking that seal he found within a simple but rather extraordinary directive. The Bent Wing’s scapegoat, Celestine of the Misthrown, was to report immediately to the Twelfth Kingdom – indeed, she was to report to the palace itself, and to the Sea Lord’s very own apartments.
The captain lifted an astonished gaze to the capital ship floating half a mile away across the placid waters, the great brazen dome of its palace glowing warm in the sunset light. Now what in all the deeps could the Sea Lord want with Celestine? She was as faithful a scapegoat as any ship could hope for, no doubt – why, she had served on board the Bent Wing longer than anyone, even Altona himself. But she was as slow and simple as a child, and hardly one to discuss high policy with the likes of Ibanez the Third, ruler of all the known Oceans and Isles.
Nevertheless, a command was a command; and anyway Captain Altona had little time to waste on idle speculation. There was still so much to be done before morning. His gaze shifted to the two ships that were riding at anchor alongside his own, their decks as busy with final preparations as were the Bent Wing’s. At dawn, all three ships would raise sail and set forth on what was surely destined to be one of the most important voyages in all history.
Two voyages, actually. But that particular fact was as yet a sworn secret.
Heaving a sigh, Altona folded the letter away. He sent a lieutenant off to inform the scapegoat, then returned to his own pressing business.
Celestine of the Misthrown was no child, even if everyone – the captain included – often treated her as one. In truth, she was over sixty years old, and there was little she did not know of the sea and ships. In her time as scapegoat – she had first set sail at the age of eleven – she had served on three different vessels and under at least a dozen captains, and seen officers and crew beyond count come and go.
But the mistake was perhaps forgivable, for her body was indeed as shrunken almost as an infant’s. Some affliction had warped her in her mother’s womb, and she had emerged wretched and bent, and had never grown properly. Hence her name; for misthrown was the title bestowed upon scapegoats who had been born with their infirmities, rather than earning them later in life by accident or illness.
Only her skull had ever attained adult size, but that made it overlarge for her thin neck, so that her head drooped to one side, giving her a deranged look. But she wasn’t mad, or even simple. True, the affliction that had twisted her body had also stiffened her tongue, making it hard for her to form words. And she had never been taught to read or write. But her thoughts, locked away behind her peculiar eyes, were wise enough in their own way.
Even so, she didn’t know what to make of the Sea Lord’s strange summons any better than had Captain Altona. At first, she only eyed the lieutenant disdainfully when he brought the news, as if he was attempting a joke at her expense. But no, it was all in earnest. The royal boat was waiting. Before she knew it, she was bundled up and loaded on board and launched off to the Twelfth Kingdom.
At which point dread took hold of her. She was really being taken to meet with Ibanez the Third? But why? Celestine could think of no explanation. She was nobody of any importance, after all. The royal court was hardly her fit place. Why, she’d never set foot upon the capital ship before, or even glimpsed the mighty Sea Lord from a distance!
So what could the invitation signify? Did it involve their impending voyage? Tomorrow the Bent Wing and its companions sailed for the Unquiet Ice, under command of the Sea Lord’s own son, the Lord Designate Nadal. As a father, Ibanez would doubtless be concerned with the fate of such a voyage, and fate was a scapegoat’s province. But the Bent Wing was the fleet’s smallest vessel: a mere merchantman. If the Sea Lord wished to discuss fortune, why not summon the scapegoat of the battleship Tempest, Nadal’s own craft and flagship of the expedition?
Ah, if only she was foresighted, as some scapegoats were, then she might know.
But Celestine possessed no foresight; or more correctly, the one occasional (and terrible) form of foresight she did possess was of no use to her right now. She could only clutch her scrawny arms to her chest, and watch wide-eyed as the Twelfth Kingdom rose up like a mountain before her.
They berthed at one of the floating docks, where a sombre-looking courtier was waiting. The man extended a hand to help Celestine from the boat – embarrassing her into a bark of laughter, for she was not used to such politeness. But the courtier bowed, and said, ‘I am to lead you to the Sea Lord’s quarters, and the climb is a long one. I can arrange a sedan chair for you, if you would prefer.’
A sedan chair! Celestine shook her head. She was old, and her legs were unsteady at the best of times, but she wasn’t helpless; she could clamber up and down between decks on the Bent Wing just fine, thank you very much. Anyway, she’d feel ridiculous being carried around like a princess.
‘Very well then,’ nodded the courtier, and so led her off along the gangway.
It was indeed a long climb, up through the capital ship’s cavernous lower decks, then out onto the vast open spaces of the main, and so on into the palace. Celestine would have found it exhausting, if not for her fear and curiosity. What a marvel the Twelfth Kingdom was! And what a monument was the palace! It towered taller than any castle from her poor home kingdom of Malmonte; and inside everything was so golden, so shining, so solid in the illumination of the great chandeliers. She had known many ships, and seen them grow old with internal rot and then disappear into the shipyards to be dismantled – but that would never happen to the Twelfth Kingdom. It felt as eternal as any city upon the land.
And yet death had not been banished here; not even amid so much enduring grandeur.
As Celestine and her guide ascended a stairway in the palace, they passed by a young woman in the company of two high-ranking officers. She was arrayed in dazzling finery – her dress of rippling silk, her neck draped with strings of pearls and diamonds – and she was beautiful too, laughing brightly with her companions. But her lovely face bore a grey cast over it like a shadow, a grey cast that Celestine knew only she could see, invisible to all others. It turned the girl’s glowing cheeks hollow to the scapegoat’s gaze, and dulled the brightness of her eyes, making them look to Celestine waxen and empty.
That shadow only ever meant one thing. Whoever the girl was, royal princess or admiral’s daughter or king’s consort, the pretty young thing would be dead withi
n a month.
Celestine bowed her head and passed on without a word, betraying nothing of her vision; she no longer tried to warn such unfortunates of their impending fate. There was a time when she had attempted it, but even on the rare occasions when she had managed to make herself understood, and had been believed, it had served no purpose anyway. Nothing could help those marked with the grey cast; no warning could enable them to avoid their doom, nor did it seem to give anyone any comfort, to know that their end was approaching.
It was useless, indeed, her one gift of foresight; to know when those around her were to die, and yet be unable to do anything to prevent it. Years ago she had decided to spare herself and others the pain. Now, when the grey cast appeared over the face of this sailor or that aboard her ship, she merely nodded and kept silent, interested only to learn how death would come to the fellow; by disease or accident, or maybe in battle. For the manner of a victim’s demise was never revealed to her. Only its imminence.
The doomed girl danced on down the stairs with the officers, heedless of her fate, and Celestine and her escort continued their climb.
Several storeys up, the crowds of courtiers and officials had thinned out; they were nearing the rarified heights of the Sea Lord’s apartments. The fear in Celestine – forgotten as she’d pondered the girl – returned now, intensified. Had she done something wrong, she wondered; committed some crime or treason all-unknowingly? She’d heard tales of dungeons deep in the holds of the Twelfth Kingdom; was she being brought before Ibanez so that he could pass judgement on her? But again, it made no sense. She wasn’t important enough, surely, to commit any crime the Sea Lord would care about.
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