The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice

by Andrew McGahan

  He spoke at last, reserved despite her apology, for he did not quite trust it, or her. ‘What am I then?’

  She appeared to genuinely consider this, as if the answer mattered. ‘You’re someone who acts, I think. You have no power or position or knowledge – and yet you do things, when others find reasons not to. Like landing on the Trap. I know that was your doing, not Samson’s.’ She looked away to the Ice Wall and the mystery of the rift. ‘Which only makes it all the more sad that your future will offer you so little chance to ever act again. There’ll be no use for you on a floating tomb like the Twelfth Kingdom. But this chasm now – if the captain had only given permission for the boats to enter there, who knows what great discoveries you might have made within.’

  Dow considered the rift, startled to hear his own thoughts so closely echoed by her, but even more puzzled as to why she had been considering his future at all. Why would she care?

  She took another seemingly reluctant breath, then confessed, ‘The truth is, Dow Amber, I need your help.’

  ‘My help?’

  Even in the dark he could detect the blush about her eyes, which were now avoiding his. ‘I know. I’ve always been … unfriendly to you. But there’s no time for that anymore. It isn’t even you who is my real enemy, after all. It’s tradition that prevents me.’ She paused a moment, not explaining. Then she asked, ‘You saw the woman on Camp Island?’

  Dow nodded, the frozen figure vivid in his memory.

  Nell’s gaze too was lost in recollection. ‘I’m a student of history in my spare hours – of which I have all too many – and in ancient times, when we Ship Kings first took to the oceans, a scapegoat whose ship was wrecked was considered to have betrayed her vessel. In those days, it was thought fitting to execute such a one.’

  Dow frowned in mystified distaste. He’d always found the concept of scapegoats disturbing anyway – but to kill those who’d failed?

  Nell went on. ‘The Bent Wing’s scapegoat was luckier to have lived in a more civilised age. Or so it would seem. I doubt she felt lucky. It’s such a helpless role we scapegoats play. We can do nothing, we cannot act on our own behalf, and yet we are meant to somehow bear responsibility. The poor woman must have felt a terrible guilt. The arrow, those stones … how she must have laboured. And what was she trying to say? Who was she saying it to?’

  She seemed to realise she was babbling, and stopped herself, taking another deep, hard breath. She stared to the rift again.

  ‘Behold, Dow Amber. Never before – even in the Golden Age of exploration – has a ship stood where we now stand. No one else has ever found their way so deep within the ice. Oh, there are endless tales of openings in the Wall, but always such openings were sighted only from afar, or were closed over again when ships returned to them a season later. And thus, through the ages, the questions have remained. Where do such passages lead? Why do they open and close? What are the lights that are sometimes glimpsed across the ice peaks? No one has ever been able to answer. But we stand within reach of the solution. If we could but push on a little further.

  ‘But do we? No! We are to turn back, says our gallant captain, and his gallant officers agree without a murmur. Men have died trying to get to where we are now – and I don’t just mean the Lord Designate and his fleet, I mean all throughout history. Ship after ship has been lost in the battle with the ice. Even that poor woman – she laboured until her last breath, just to point the way to this place. And yet we – having arrived here with scarcely an effort – want to turn back at the first sign of difficulty!

  ‘It’s shameful. What kind of mariners can we call ourselves, if we retreat now? Are you not curious, Dow Amber, about what lies at the rift’s end? Is it the fabled pole? Is there an ocean of warm water there, with new lands and cities and peoples unmet? Does Nadal still live perhaps, there on the other side? Or is it none of these things, but something else entirely? And whatever the reality, don’t you want to know? Wasn’t it for this very purpose – to explore such a place – that you first longed to set out to sea?’

  Dow listened in growing bemusement. He’d never expected to hear Nell talk this way, so openly, so earnestly. The death of her fellow scapegoat must have affected her deeply. But his puzzlement remained. He understood her vehemence about the decision to retreat, and even shared it – but why was she arguing her case to him?

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I wonder what lies beyond the rift. But Captain Vincente has made his ruling.’

  She glanced at him, eyes wide. ‘You agree then with the captain that the chasm cannot be entered, because of the great waves that issue from it, ever and anon?’

  ‘You don’t agree?’

  She dug into the pocket of her anorak, and pulled forth a small object. It was an hourglass. She held it up in her gloved hand. ‘I’ve studied the rift all this day, from my cabin window, with this glass always by my side. Four times now the waves have issued forth since we anchored here. They don’t follow any regular pattern that I can detect, save for this – not once has a wave yet come less than two hours after the wave before. It was twice over three hours – but never less than two. What do you think of that?’

  Dow bit his lip, staring at the timepiece. It was an interesting fact. But surely she wasn’t suggesting—

  She put the glass away, looking once more beyond the rail to the mouth of the rift. ‘Imagine if a boat set out just after a wave had come through, it would have two hours at least to explore the chasm. One hour to progress as far inwards as it could, and then, if nothing had been found, nor any safe place to anchor or dock, the crew would still have one hour to come back.’

  An hour? Dow couldn’t help but calculate. It was unlikely that a sail could be raised in the rift, but how far could a cutter row in that time? Four miles? Six miles, if the crew was pushing hard? What might such a journey reveal, six miles between those narrow cliffs …

  ‘Vincente would never allow it,’ he said.

  Nell laughed softly. ‘I’ve already asked him, and indeed he refused. He said that without knowing the cause of the waves, we cannot be sure of their timing, and that he will not risk men’s lives on a guess.’

  Dow shrugged. That was that then.

  Nell wasn’t finished. ‘I mentioned it also to Lieutenant Diego.’

  Her tone was carefully neutral, but Dow was quick to discern the trace of disappointment. ‘And?’

  She looked away. ‘He too scorned the idea.’

  Dow smiled coldly.

  ‘It’s not that he lacks the courage for it,’ Nell protested. ‘He simply thinks it cannot hope to succeed. Also – as I knew before I asked – he would never disobey a direct order from the captain, for all that he has no fondness for Vincente. Like all Ship Kings officers, he is locked into too rigid a chain of command and protocol to strike out alone.’ Here she straightened, to stare archly at Dow. ‘But you are not an officer or a Ship King.’

  Ah … so that was the way of it. Dow’s curiosity cooled a fraction. No wonder she had apologised for her behaviour, and even praised him. Her own loyal lieutenant – her purported future husband, no less – had declined to indulge her fantastic proposal, and so she’d turned to Dow – the ignorant New Island boy – first to charm him, and then to use him.

  He let his disdain show. ‘You think I should disobey the captain and take a boat into the chasm?’

  ‘Of course not!’ was her affronted reply. ‘I want to go. But I need you and your crew to take me.’

  Dow was surprised into silence. She wanted to go? But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t a sailor, she was only ...

  She might have heard his thought, so angrily did she bridle within her anorak. ‘You think you’re the only one capable of bravery? You think only you dare maelstroms and the like? You’ve no idea what others are capable of – what I’m capable of; what I’ve already been through just to stand here on this ship. Far worse than your little whirlpool, believe me!’

  Her fury was so impressive (
and so outrageous – little whirlpool indeed!) that Dow’s scepticism evaporated. He saw that she really did intend to do this thing. But it made no difference.

  He said, ‘Even if I could convince the crew to do it, what hope is there of obtaining a craft? The captain has forbidden any expedition. There’s no way we could launch a boat in secret. Everyone would see.’

  Her anger vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by an eager excitement. ‘That’s just it. We don’t have to launch one, not from up here on the main deck. Have you forgotten? One is already launched; it’s waiting in the water, attached only by single line.’

  Once more, Dow was taken aback. She was right. The boat from the Bent Wing had been trailing behind the Chloe all along, and it floated there still. It had no rigging, true, but it still possessed rowlocks for oars.

  So it could be done. Conceivably. Possibly.

  But even so …

  ‘The men will never agree,’ he said

  Her eyes were still fervent. ‘They followed you through the reefs to Trap Island, did they not? They consider you touched by fate, I know; the old poet in particular. They’ll follow you into the rift as well.’

  ‘Against the captain’s orders?’

  ‘They will – if you tell them that their own scapegoat gives her blessing. Indeed, that she will go with them. Think of it, Dow Amber, think of the fame that will be ours, if we can pass through. Think of the lives that will be ours – the freedom that we will win for ourselves – if we succeed. Otherwise what awaits you? Obscurity and confinement. And as for me …’

  As for her …

  Again, as it had long ago on the Twelfth Kingdom, a surge seemed to run between them, a connection – only far stronger this time – and Dow glimpsed in her the same horror of inactivity and helplessness that lay in himself. It was a horror that had driven her to swallow her pride and to ask for help from someone who until now she had regarded as beneath her. He didn’t understand her reasons fully, but he recognised the desperate need in her to act, whatever the cost – to do something other than exist as a mere useless symbol.

  Dow, of all people, knew what that was like.

  He gave a single, slow nod.

  Her eyes flashed joyfully and she gripped him about the shoulders. ‘Then you must fetch your men now, while the ship sleeps. We must be ready to set out as soon as the next wave comes. If we delay it will be too late. Vincente means to depart the instant the fog lifts.’

  ‘I’ll try. That’s all I can do.’

  ‘Meet me in the sail room with your men in half an hour.’

  ‘But the boat—’

  ‘I’ll take care of the boat. Go!’

  Dow went.

  And yet … he was not sure, even now, that he really meant to go through with it. It was preposterous, after all, to think they’d get away undiscovered. And to actually enter the chasm might be suicidally dangerous, no matter Nell’s theories. No, Dow promised himself, if by some chance they made it that far, only then would he decide it was truly safe to proceed.

  He stole away below and found Alfons on the Third Gun deck. The old sailor was sitting with several of his drowsy fellows around one of the fires. Catching his eye, Dow drew him away to a corner and in a low voice quickly explained the situation, as Alfons’s gaze went wide. The poet gave a soft whistle when Dow was done, and chewed a fingernail.

  ‘We’ll all be flogged,’ he opined finally.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dow, ‘not even if we’re caught. Not when it’s the ship’s scapegoat’s own idea.’

  ‘Aye. Whatever else could be said, a scapegoat is a scapegoat, and not to be lightly ignored. And I saw this coming in her, did I not? ’ Alfons studied Dow all the more wonderingly. ‘You though – you’re the key, Mr Amber. Are you meant to do this, do you think?’

  Dow considered uneasily. Was he meant to do this? No – he no longer allowed himself to believe things like that. But he wanted to do it, of that there was no doubt.

  He did not wish to lie to the old man though … He said, ‘I think we should do it, that’s all I know.’

  Alfons nodded. ‘Good enough for me.’ He glanced to his mates around the fire. ‘But you’d be wanting all six of us to crew the cutter, and Luca and Danton are in sick bay with frost-bit fingers – those nights leading-out in the boats got to ’em, gloves or no. I can vouch for the other three, but I don’t know that I could convince anyone else to come, not against orders. They don’t know you as well as we do, you see.’

  Dow pondered. ‘Never mind. I think I know of two more.’

  ‘We’ll need strong backs, mind!’

  ‘Don’t worry – they’re strong.’

  Dow hurried down another two decks to the smithy.

  He had absolutely no right, he knew, to ask it of Johannes and Nicky. They owed him nothing, indeed, the reverse was true, so generous had they been to him since he’d come on board.

  Yet somehow he knew they’d want to go – and when the bleary Johannes was roused from sleep and told the story, his reaction was to slap himself across the face to come fully awake, and to grin at Dow as if really seeing him for the first time. ‘Well now,’ he declared at last, ‘if a scapegoat and a poet and the boy who rode the maelstrom are all for it, who am I to say no?’

  A sudden doubt struck Dow. ‘You can row, can’t you?’

  Johannes only laughed hugely in reply, then reached over to the next hammock to give the still snoring Nicky a shove.

  So Dow had his crew.

  The sail room was situated in the forecastle, and was a jumbled space of stacked canvas and long workbenches. It was deserted with the ship at anchor, and unheated, but it opened directly to the main deck. The six men – each bundled so heavily as to be barely recognisable to each other – waited in the shadows while Dow stood on watch at the half-open door, peering out.

  The Chloe seemed safely somnolent. Lamps glowed dimly here and there in the rigging, haloed by the mist, and one or two figures could be glimpsed huddled at watch posts, their breaths plumes of steam. High above, the red and green glows still shimmered against the sky, but below, the fog remained a dense cloak about the ship. But even with the fog’s help, Dow could not imagine how they would bring the boat alongside unobserved – let alone climb down to it. The stealth required would be impossible.

  Then he noticed a figure moving haltingly along the railing. It was Nell – but what she was doing? She would move a few steps, stare out seemingly at the mist, then move a few steps more. It wasn’t until Dow noticed that one of her hands trailed oddly over the side that he realised what was happening. She had untied the boat from the stern, and slowly, as if merely wandering along the main deck rail, she was dragging it forward.

  Dow had to smile. The nerve of the girl! She reached the foot of the forecastle, surreptitiously made the rope fast there, then came over to him, and together they slipped back into the sail room.

  ‘Even so,’ Dow whispered, ‘we’ll never get the eight of us down the side without being seen. Or heard.’

  ‘Yes we will.’ She was half a head shorter than anyone in the room, and was almost on tiptoe with anticipation. ‘All we have to do is wait for the next wave to come – it shouldn’t be long now – and in all the rush and noise, no one will hear a thing as we climb down.’

  She’d thought of everything.

  So they waited. The time stretched on, and every now and then Dow peered anxiously out to the main deck, but no watchmen came their way, and no chance wanderer happened upon them.

  At last, he sensed that the Chloe was moving slowly beneath them, swinging on its anchor chain. ‘Do you feel it?’ Nell whispered, her breath hot in his ear. ‘It’s very close now. In the last few minutes before a wave comes, a current always begins to flow into the chasm.’

  Dow nodded. Hidden by the fog, the waters of the gulf were streaming silently in through the rift’s mouth, like an inhalation of breath. Dow held his own, waiting. And then it began, the same eerie
whistling, louder and more uncanny than ever – and following it, the growing roar of the approaching wave, barrelling through the icy narrows. It was invisible from Dow’s vantage point, but the thunder was unmistakable as it collapsed outwards into the channel. The Chloe lurched and lifted its bow into the surge, swinging back hard against the anchor.

  ‘Move!’ Nell hissed, and then the eight of them were through the door and hastening across the deck to the rail. In a few instants the first man – it was Alfons, a purloined oar in his hand – was over the side and shinnying down the rope to the boat. The little craft was bumping alarmingly against the hull as the water churned by, but so were many sizeable chunks of floating ice, so perhaps even now no one would take notice. Swiftly the other five rowers followed, each man with his own oar, and some also toting ropes or lamps, and one a small anchor. Then it was only Nell and Dow left topside.

  Which was when a voice enquired, ‘What in all the seas are you men up to there?’

  They spun. A bundled figure was approaching questioningly from the direction of the stern castle – an officer. But even as the man came up he unwrapped his hood, and Dow saw to his partial relief that it was Samson. The young lieutenant stared down in bafflement at the boat, and then at the two figures by the rail. Moved by some intuition, Dow said nothing but opened his own hood to show his face. Nell did the same.

  Samson studied them both. Several times his lips moved as if he was going to speak, but each time something stopped him. Dow waited. There was no reason to hope that the Samson would understand what they were trying to do, or that he would allow it. And yet he knew, too, that Samson – for all that they’d never discussed it – felt indebted to him, because of the landing on Trap Island. The lieutenant’s standing on the Chloe had risen immensely since then, and Dow had said nothing to gainsay the impression that it had been Samson’s idea all along. But they each knew the truth.

  Or maybe it was Nell’s presence that made the difference. Or maybe Samson really did understand, all in a glance, what was happening. For in the end he only shook his head warningly, just once, as if to say I was never here, and never saw you, then he turned and walked away.