‘Not so odd a fancy, indeed,’ was her reply. ‘Each one has his inborn qualities, ’tis thought; yet few live long enough to bring them to their fullest flower. Fast within the Hub, men like him are but clever navigators; yet out upon the Wheel they’ll soon learn to sight you on a star through every twist and turn of shifting time. Only here does the true power blossom from within the skill and the learning that are its swaddlings. You, my friend, you might be a mighty trader in time, perhaps; though you would needs first fill that void in you, feed your starved spirit that it may grow. ’Tis more than passion you lack. Men need a cause in living, lest others find it for them.’ She dunked the last crust of bread in her coffee – bowl and drained it to the grounds. ‘And, since we’re turned the idle philosopher, Stephen my lad, high time I kept my word and opened to you something of my own peculiar mystery. My lectures are curt, but my reasonings cut deep! Up, then, and a’guard!’
So my lessons began, in swordsmanship and in other things also, perhaps. Right from the start, from the stance, they were severely practical; we fenced with naked edge and unbarred point, which soon teaches you respect for what you’re messing with. At first, on our way downriver, Mall only marked each touch by landing light playful taps with the flat of her blade. It was almost a compliment when she began to deal out real stinging slaps.
By then we were at sea. We’d made such a quick passage I’d begun to hope we might find the black ship’s sails still in sight when we left the delta, or get her last heading from the tug as it returned. Instead we passed its smoking remains on a sandbank.
‘What do we do now?’ repeated Jyp disgustedly, when I told him there was nobody left alive in the wreck. ‘We’ll set a good swift course for Hispaniola, that’s what. But not the swiftest. We’ve got to overhaul the Wolves before they get there, if we can. There’ll be some help awaiting them, you can depend on that; help we may not like. So, all along the way we search. We search like hell!’
And so by day and night we beat back and forth along the course, sweeping as wide as we dared; by day, over an ocean of dazzling blue, a vast sphere of sapphire, it seemed, upon which nothing stirred save schools of dolphin racing to play in our bow-wave, and great sleeting shoals of flying fish. By night –
But what lay beneath our hull by night was a question I only asked once. Jyp gazed out into infinity, and smiled. ‘The seas east of the sun, west of the moon,’ he said quietly. ‘Between the Straits of the Night and the Sound of Morning they lie, beyond the Gates of Noon. The waves that break beneath charmed casements, beneath cloud – castle towers. There’s others might give you plainer answers, but I tell it you straight, you wouldn’t thank ’em. Some things’re best seen for yourself – and one day, maybe, if you’re in luck, you will.’
Which effectively silenced me. I never plucked up the nerve to ask anyone else. I was more than a little afraid what might happen if I couldn’t believe the answer. But I kept being reminded of what I’d seen once, on a lonely night-flight back from some joyless business in France. Then, our small plane climbed between two layers of cloud, the one beneath level and rolling like a steel – blue sea, the one above heavier, craggier, foreboding as grey granite; one lone slash of pallid orange defined a horizon that would otherwise have been lost in trackless infinity. If I’d looked down, looked longer, would I have glimpsed tall masts above those cloudcrests, broad sails gliding towards that last distant light?
East-southeast that course led us, towards the Dry Tortugas and from there southeast again, between Great Bahama Bank and the haunted Havanaise coast to Windward Passage. In all that time we sighted few other sails, and none were black; nor, when we hailed them, had they sighted any. It didn’t take us long to guess the Wolves were taking an eccentric course to avoid us – flattering, after a fashion. But it left Le Stryge as our main hope, and nobody liked that. He kept to his cabin, from which strange sounds and even stranger odours seeped, and emerged from time to time only to confirm that our quarry was ahead of us somewhere on more or less this bearing. Each time he seemed greyer and more exhausted. ‘They grow harder to follow,’ he growled, more than once. ‘Something new reaches out to them, something that seeks to shield them from my sight. But it is not strong enough. Not yet.’
