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

by Marie Brennan

  RSS BASILISK

  His madness lay not in outward appearances, nor even in daily behaviour, but simply in the fact that he considered the sea a challenge. Like all sailors who survive for longer than a year, he had a healthy respect for the dangers the ocean poses … but “respect for” and “fear of” are not quite the same thing. One had no sooner to tell him a thing was difficult than he would immediately begin formulating plans to test himself against it.

  As you may imagine, this gave him certain troubles in the keeping of crew. But over the years since the war, he had, by a cycle of attrition and recruitment, driven away all those who were not willing to tolerate his eccentricity and put together an assortment of men who did not mind overmuch. Very few of them were married, though most if not all availed themselves of the hospitality to be found in ports the world over, and I have no doubt that between them they could crew another ship with the natural children they had sired. The notion that their captain might get them killed in some doomed attempt to navigate an unnavigable channel or outrace a lethal storm was one they accepted with philosophical resignation. So long as they were paid on time, all was well.

  These souls—some sixty-five in number—were to be my companions for the next two years. To that list I added Tom Wilker, Abby Carew, and my son, plus others encountered along the way. My social world had been restricted before, but through solitary hermitage, not confinement among a group of people whom I could not escape. I had my cabin, but I shared it with Abby and Jake, and furthermore I—who had enjoyed so much of the natural world in my past—could not endure being cooped up in it for long. I had no desire to escape into the rigging, however, as Jake habitually did (my son having taken to the ropes with the ease and confidence of the monkey he sometimes resembled). The best I could do, when the company became too much, was to seat myself in the bow of the ship, as far forward as I could go, and pretend there was nothing in the world but myself and the sea.

  But I get ahead of myself. It was a bright Graminis morning when we arrived on the dock in Sennsmouth, baggage in tow, to get ourselves situated aboard the Basilisk. The captain had sent the jolly-boat to collect us, while a larger tender waited to take our gear; the ship’s draught was too great for it to come right up to the docks. We therefore had what seemed like all the time in the world to survey our new home as the sailors rowed us out.

  Tom and I had both seen the Basilisk more than once before, when making the arrangements for this journey. For both Abby and Jake, however, this was their first sight. Abby studied it in silence; I knew her well enough by then to recognize it as a cover for nerves. Jake, by contrast, would have dived over the side if he thought he could swim there faster. I had to call him back rather sharply, for he was getting in the way of the oarsmen.

  Abby was in skirts, as was I, for we had not yet left Scirland. Because of this, they lowered the bosun’s chair for the two of us, while Tom and Jake climbed the ladder. Tom, thank heaven, had the good sense to delay Jake as long as he could, such that by the time my son reached the deck, I was almost there myself.

  Almost, but not quite. I could not reach out to restrain him as Jake attained the boards, took one wide-eyed look around, and bolted off to explore.

  He did not get more than ten steps before a voice bellowed, “Halt!”

  It was not a voice one could disobey. Even the sailors checked briefly in their movements, and they had long practice in determining who was the target of any given order. Jake skidded to so quick a stop, I almost laughed.

  The voice had come from the raised quarterdeck. The sun stood just behind, so I had to squint against the light as I looked up, and saw only a looming figure at first. I do not put it past him to have been aware of that, and to have used it a-purpose.

  It was, of course, the mad Dione Aekinitos. He descended to the main deck with a heavy tread, the ladder creaking beneath his boots. He was not so large of a man as all that, but he had a knack for making himself sound weighty when he chose; I think he knew where every board on his vessel groaned the most heavily. As he went, he said, “There is no running on this ship unless I command it. And I have not commanded you to run. What is your name, boy?”

  My son licked his lips, staring up at him. “Jake. Jacob Camherst. Um. Sir.”

  By then I was on deck. Maternal instinct—which I do possess, despite rumours to the contrary—urged me to go forward and intervene, for Aekinitos was looming over Jake in a menacing fashion. But I knew enough of shipboard etiquette to know that it would be the height of bad form to get in the captain’s way on a matter of discipline. We were not sailors under his command … but in the absence of a very good reason, it was better to behave as if we were. To do otherwise was to undermine his authority, create ill will, and generally get our voyage off to a very unfortunate start.

  “Have you ever been on board a ship before, boy?” Aekinitos asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then here is your first lesson. You do not touch anything. Boys who have never been on ships before create problems. They play with ropes, and do not put them back properly. Then the rope does not uncoil smoothly when it is needed. Perhaps we are in a storm when the tangled rope is found. The items that need to be lashed down are not secured in time, and they go overboard. Perhaps it is a man who goes overboard. Perhaps he dies. Or a sail is not adjusted quickly enough, and the mast breaks, or we run aground. Perhaps we all die. All because a boy did not know to keep his hands off that which he does not understand.” Aekinitos paused in this impressive recitation. “Do you understand, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Aekinitos bent ever so slightly over him. “What do you understand?”

  To his credit, Jake stood his ground, instead of backing up. Or he might have simply been rooted to the spot. “That I shouldn’t touch anything, sir.”

  “Good.” Aekinitos straightened and, without the slightest pause, turned to me with a broad smile upon his face. “Mrs. Camherst. Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you, captain,” I said. Now I did go to Jake’s side. I did not put my arm around him; the chastisement had been a necessary one, for without it he would have gotten into everything before the day was out. But I did not want him to feel wholly abandoned. “The lady behind you is Jake’s governess, Abigail Carew. Tom, of course, you know already.”

  When the introductions were finished, Aekinitos sent his first mate, Mr. Dolin, to show us our living quarters. Tom bunked with the officers—we always used that word, “bunked,” even though he slept in a hammock, as we all did—but Abby, Jake, and I had been given the luxury of our own cabin in the stern, beneath the poop deck.

  If I tell you that it was cramped, you will not truly catch my meaning, unless you have lived on board a ship yourself. Throughout most of the room, Abby could not stand fully upright; my own head almost brushed the beams. The exception was beneath the raised skylight, which gave us our only natural illumination. We had to learn to sleep through anything, for the officers carried out their work directly above our heads, and although Aekinitos could step quietly when he wished to, the same could not be said for a few of the others. The room as a whole was less than three meters on a side, and we shared it with the mizzenmast; I often had occasion to curse the fellow who decided to add it to the ship’s design, driving the thick post directly through our cabin.

  Into this space we crammed ourselves, our trunks, our books (as well as every other book aboard the ship, not that there were many), and a table on which to work. And so we lived for two years.

  To Jake, of course, it seemed at first like a great adventure. Every novelty is enjoyable, when you are nine. Too, he spent much less time in that cabin than I did, for while Abby, Tom, and I did keep up his lessons, he was not directly engaged in the work of the expedition. For my own part, I found my quarters at first shockingly small, then acceptable, then unbearable, and finally as unworthy of comment as the water in which a fish swims.

  The reason for the cramped quarters
was that I would have needed to be the richest woman in Scirland to hire a ship and crew for two years, solely for the purpose of looking at dragons. No amount of household economy could prepare me for such an expense. The voyage of the Basilisk was a joint venture, its burden shared with the Scirling Geographical Association, the Ornithological Society, and a Nichaean trading company, the Twelve Seas Fleet, which has since gone out of business. The first two meant I had obligations not only to the Winfield Courier and to my own research, but also to those intellectual bodies. The third meant that what space on the Basilisk was not taken up with people and supplies must be devoted to cargo—and those people and supplies must take up as little space as possible.

  I had tried, of course, to interest the Philosophers’ Colloquium in our endeavour. Some of their members had spoken in praise of my research, and Tom had made inroads with that body, such that I fully expected him to be offered a fellowship upon our return. Despite pressure from our patron, however—Lord Hilford, now sadly ailing—they had declined to lend us any material assistance, or indeed anything beyond vague and halfhearted good wishes. The woman and the lower-class man from Niddey had yet to earn their respect.

  At the time I resented it, but the sting has long since worn off. Besides: had they granted us financial support, we might not have been forced to take certain measures so as to keep the expedition funded. And had we not done that, how different might my life have been?

  * * *

  Many people assume that an expedition which would later become so famous must have departed with great fanfare, but nothing could be further from the truth.

  Back then, all eyes were on the diplomatic voyage upon which the king’s niece Princess Miriam was soon to embark. It was a gesture of goodwill to a variety of countries with whom we were not on the best of terms at the time: Haggad, Yelang, Kehliyo, Thiessin, and others I have forgotten. The more political news-sheets were busy speculating as to whether her mission would result in conciliation, and if so, at what cost; the more frivolous ones filled their pages with gossip about whom Her Royal Highness would meet and what she would wear. Either way, they had very little attention to spare for a mere scientific survey.

  I had been to sea before, but never for the purpose of being at sea. My previous voyages had been a means of arriving at my destination, nothing more. While that was true to some extent now—I did have an itinerary of places we intended to visit—the ship was to be my home for the duration, rather than merely a conveyance. I must confess there was a feeling of excitement to it, as if I were a child achieving something magical, though sailing had never been a girlhood dream of mine. That first evening, as we rode the tide out to sea, I stood with Jake in the bow and laughed into the wind. Perhaps it is hindsight only that says I knew this was the beginning of something significant. Perhaps not.

  We headed first into northern waters, the seas around Svaltan and Siaure, taking advantage of what little summer that latitude could afford. Much of the region becomes icebound for the better part of the year, the sea freezing solid or nearly so for miles around. Nowadays, of course, we have icebreakers—vessels whose engines can force them through the pack—and owing to this, much polar exploration has become possible. At the time, however, we lacked such ships. The Basilisk was not even fitted with the kinds of reinforcement that could protect her against ice. But it hardly mattered, for what we came there to observe was only ever seen in the summer months, regardless.

  The debate over the migration of sea-serpents was an old one. Sailors had reported them in latitudes ranging from the tropics to the far north, and some claimed the great beasts moved with the seasons. Others disputed this, citing various facts to support their position. Tendrils above the eyes and around the snout, for example, were often reported on tropical beasts, but rarely if ever on arctic ones. In the mid-latitudes, serpents were often seen year-round; those in the north were generally larger than those in the south, suggesting that perhaps they were different species. Round and round the points had gone, but most of those engaged in the debate were arguing from data that amounted to little more than anecdote and hearsay. I aimed to change that.

  “There’s no easy way to prove it in one direction or another,” Tom said our first night at sea. He and I were dining in the wardroom with the captain and his officers, which is a courtesy sometimes extended to passengers. The table had low railings around the edge, which helped prevent our dishes from sliding into our laps when the seas were rough. That night, however, there was only a mild swell: enough to serve as a reminder that one was at sea, but not enough to inconvenience. (Unless one happened to be Abby, who struggled greatly with seasickness at first.)

  I said, “If it were possible to mark the serpents, as they do with cattle or His Majesty’s swans, we could know for certain. Simply brand them with something to indicate the latitude at which they are found, and the date, and then see if you find them far distant in a different season. But even supposing we could persuade them to hold still for such an operation, how would we ever find them again? Needles in haystacks do not enter into it.”

  Aekinitos nodded. He did not need me to tell him how vast the sea was, and how dangerous its creatures.

  Curious, Tom asked, “What is your opinion, sir? Do you think they migrate?”

  The captain gazed meditatively at the beams supporting the deck above. “They do not behave the same, those in the north and the south. You know of this?”

  “Do you mean their method of defense?” I asked. “Yes, of course. It is one of the key points in my broader consideration of taxonomy. How much does extraordinary breath matter, in terming something a ‘dragon’ or a mere ‘cousin’? In the tropics, sea-serpents suck in water and then expel it in a great jet.”

  “It can kill a whale,” Aekinitos said. “Or crack the hull of a ship.”

  He sounded entirely delighted with this, as if admiring another man’s strength, and nevermind that said strength could mean the end of him and all his crew. I said, “If they expel the water from their stomachs, rather than as a form of breath—and the observations generally agree that this is the case—then it is not extraordinary breath, and traditional taxonomy says they are not dragons. Regardless, this is not seen in the north. The serpents there constrict their prey instead.”

  “It is not breath,” he agreed. “We have killed sea-serpents before, and in their stomachs, we find water. But only in the south. Is this because they are different?” He shrugged. “Perhaps it is only because the water in the north is colder.”

  This was precisely my theory: that the variation in behaviour was due to environment, not species difference. Filling one’s stomach with icy arctic water would be a tremendous shock to the system. But that did not prove migration one way or another; for that, we would need better observation of the creatures themselves.

  Achieving this was no easy matter. We had no difficulty finding the serpents; among our equipment was a set of very good telescopes, and during those first weeks Tom and I spent hours staring through them, our hands going cold inside our gloves, watching the great coils rise and fall through the chill blue waters of those northern waves. The men in the rigging soon developed a habit of bellowing down to us any time they spotted one—which became tedious when we were engaged in other, more pressing work. But that was in movement, at a distance, and we only ever saw bits at a time. This was the sort of data upon which the current theories had been founded, and it was not enough. To establish anything for certain, we needed to do as we had done before: hunt one of the creatures, like mariners out of a tale.

  THREE

  Luring serpents—Sharks—The battle is joined—Seaborne dissection—Jake and the head—Pronouns—I consider taxonomy

  Much like sharks, sea-serpents can be attracted with chum. To do so is a risky business, however, if there is more than one serpent in the neighbourhood.

  We had to choose our spot carefully, in waters that, according to the Svaltansk sailors we questioned, were
less haunted by the beasts. This meant it took us several attempts to attract our prey, but it was a sacrifice all were willing to make, if it meant not attracting four at once.

  The sailors took in fish, chopped them up, and filled a tarpaulin with the stinking results, which the jolly-boat carried some distance away before tipping it over the side. Then those aboard rowed with all haste back to the Basilisk, for the entire purpose of that part of the exercise was to make sure the bait was not too close to the ship. This having been done, several lookouts were posted in the rigging to scan the waves for coils, telltale wakes, or dark shadows moving beneath the surface.

  The first three times we did this, our watch was fruitless. Countless other predators and scavengers came to enjoy the bounty—and in fact they, not the fish, were our true bait, for while sea-serpents will swallow any meat they can get, no matter how small, they prefer to eat larger creatures such as arctic sharks. Despite the lure, however, we saw nothing draconic in the water.

  Our effort was not entirely wasted, for the hides or meat or teeth of various predators will fetch a good price in the right places. We had a good hunt of our own. I keenly felt the need for our expedition to turn a profit whenever possible, though. Much discouraged, I told the captain we should abandon the effort and move on; but he was not a man who abandoned anything without great cause. He insisted on trying once more.

  The day was a bright one, the sky an intense blue that only seems possible at sea. The air for once was warm enough that I was prepared to call it “bracing,” instead of complaining that I could not feel my fingers. We caught and butchered our fish, cast our bait, and waited.