The War of the Four Isles

by Andrew McGahan

  Agatha too was grimly amused. ‘You think I connived to put you in danger that day, by making you go out with Jake on the boat? Not at all! It was Jake himself I was trying keep out of harm’s way!’

  Dow frowned. ‘What harm?’

  ‘Do you remember how eager Oliver was that Jake should go out among the whales? He’s no fool, the colonel; he’d already begun to suspect Jake and me by then. I feared he was planning a convenient accident while Jake was off the ship, some way to see Jake abandoned or lost. But I knew he wouldn’t dare do so – in front of everyone else – if Dow Amber was on the same boat.’

  The captain and the harpooner exchanged a wry glance at the memory, but Dow didn’t share their amusement. ‘But why all the secrecy? Why not just tell me all this? I would’ve been on your side!’

  Jake Tooth was scornful. ‘You would have believed us over your precious Cassandra? Without proof? No . . . you were well under her spell; we saw no point in trusting you with deadly secrets.’

  Agatha Harp hesitated a moment before adding, ‘In fact, Dow, I don’t think you understand even now the magnitude of her deceit. Not just on this voyage, but for as long as you’ve known her.’

  Dow stared in unwilling bemusement. There was more he did not know?

  ‘I speak of your homeland. It was Cassandra’s particular task at Damien Tender’s command, so Jake and I think, to keep you from asking questions about New Island or demanding to return there.’

  Dow said, ‘But that was no secret, it was just that the War Master wanted me to wait until—’ Then, at the pitying look in Agatha Harp’s eye, he caught himself, the awful realisation sinking in. ‘What do you know? What’s happening on New Island?’

  ‘We do know a little, perhaps,’ she replied, ‘even though great efforts are made to ensure that no news escapes from there. But I think it better that you hear it from those who know more; Colonel Oliver, for one, has fought with the armies on your homeland. I have him waiting outside now, with Cassandra. Shall I call them in to give account of themselves?’

  Dow could only nod, filled with dread suddenly for his family. Cassandra had always been at such pains to assure him that they were safe . . .

  ‘Good,’ said the captain. ‘It’s time that all truths were laid bare on this ship.’ She lifted her head and called, ‘Bring in the prisoners!’

  Dow turned, and as the doors opened he was reminded forcibly of the moment – some six months ago now – when the Ship Kings marine had likewise been dragged into the Great Cabin for interrogation.

  But now it was Cassandra.

  Dow could still scarcely credit that the person he’d thought he’d known so well could do what she had done. And, indeed, the laundress seemed entirely a stranger as she was brought in and placed in a chair, her hands tied, her dress filthy with gore, her lip swollen black from the harpooner’s kick. She sat with her head bent forward and her eyes – red and bruised; she must have been crying in her cell – downcast.

  Colonel Oliver, on the other hand, was unbowed. Crippled, he was carried in already propped in a chair, his ruined leg bandaged, his destroyed hand also, and his chest wrapped in bloodstained linen. But he might have been the victor, so triumphant was his manner. Noting the presence of Nell as they set him down, he even smiled. ‘My congratulations to you, scapegoat – though I would have thought it was your particular role to die for your fellows, rather than outlive them all.’

  Dow suppressed a shudder of anger and revulsion. To think that he had counted on this man to defend Nell. But Nell herself gave no reaction to the barb, did not even acknowledge the colonel’s existence.

  ‘As for you,’ Oliver added, looking at Agatha Harp, ‘I do not recognise your authority here. You stand revealed as a mutineer to your captain, and to your ship, and as a traitor to your homeland.’

  ‘And you, Colonel,’ replied the former first officer, ‘stand revealed as a common murderer. If you represent what my homeland has become, then I’m right to stand against it.’

  ‘Fine words,’ the colonel observed. ‘But it was hardly murder. It was an act of war. Had we not moved, the Heretics would have gone free.’

  ‘And settled a peace! Why do you hate the idea so? Are you that addicted to fighting?’

  Oliver shrugged minimally, almost as if bored. ‘How can it be any other way? Even if peace was declared tomorrow, it would only mean a pause while both Ship Kings and Twin Islanders rearmed, ready to begin again another day. One side will always seek to rule the other. And if it must be so, then let the fighting be done now, and have the thing decided.’

  ‘Even if we lose?’

  ‘We’re not going to lose!’ Oliver’s cold eyes lit briefly. ‘We’re on the verge of victory! One more summer and triumph is certain. We have the chance to reign over an empire greater than the Ship Kings ever imagined; our foundries will build us iron fleets bigger and better than ever seen before. But just as the prize is in our grasp, simpletons like you want to give it away for a pointless and temporary peace settlement!’

  Agatha Harp’s tone went mild. ‘And what of New Island in this empire of yours?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Well, we are told by the War Master that the New Islanders are our allies, and fight with us – but is it true? Are they to be rulers, as we will be, in this new world? Or will they be our subjects? After all, they’ve suffered under Ship Kings dominion just as long as we have – so are they not also to gain their freedom?’

  ‘Freedom!’ scorned the army officer. ‘And what have they done to earn it? All those years we sweated and starved and died on the Great Atoll – and what were the New Islanders doing? Nothing! They lazed in their plentiful land, and served the Ship Kings faithfully, and never dreamed of rebellion. Well, if they’re so comfortable in subservience to an overlord, then let them remain that way! They won’t even notice the difference.’

  The captain looked at Dow with a rueful shrug. ‘There you hear Damien Tender’s very own thoughts, I’m afraid. It is another secret of the war that he keeps well hidden, at least from most of our folk outside the army and its commanders. Your people are not fighting with us, and never have – they are being subjugated by us. New Island is to be our possession, and your people our slaves.’

  ‘But this is infamy,’ said Johannes. ‘We are not overlords! Dow here has always served as proof that we and New Island are in alliance!’

  ‘Yes, he’s been very useful in that regard,’ remarked Jake cuttingly. ‘Why would any of our own folk doubt our intentions towards New Island, when the Laundresses are forever spreading the tales of how the great Dow Amber fights alongside us.’

  Agatha considered Dow with grave sympathy. ‘Our authorities have used you cruelly, Dow. But they feared your famous name even as they exploited it. What if you ever went home and discovered the truth? What if you became the leader of a New Island uprising? You had to be distracted from that at any cost. So they sent you Cassandra.’

  Cassandra . . .

  Dow had sat, shamed to silence by these mounting disclosures – that he had been lied to so comprehensively, and misused so vastly by the Twin Islands high command. Now his gaze turned in pained accusation to the laundress, for it was she who had carried it out, she who must have known from the very beginning how completely he was being deceived. She was aware of his stare, he sensed. But she would not raise her eyes to meet his.

  Colonel Oliver gave a snort. ‘It wasn’t all her doing; the New Islander has proved more than capable of deluding himself. Imagine Damien Tender’s surprise when the great Dow Amber came demanding – on his own behalf – that after all these years he not be sent to New Island, but dispatched to Banishment instead. It was all the War Master could do not to laugh, and to pretend reluctance, lest he seem too eager, and give the game away even to this dullard of a Young Admiral.’

  On Cassandra’s filthy cheek, the streak of a single tear could be seen.

  Dow spoke to her at last, amazed at the gentleness
of his voice, when inside all was rage. ‘Cassandra, what about my family?’

  ‘Your family!’ scoffed the colonel. ‘As if anyone ever cared about your family!’

  Agatha Harp’s tone was sharp. ‘Do you know anything of their fate, Colonel?’

  ‘Only that there was never any question of us protecting them. We had the Ship Kings to fight; what did a single family matter?’

  ‘Do they live?’

  Oliver shrugged. ‘War has marched over the highlands several times already, many are dead or displaced there. Who can say?’

  Dow ignored him, still watching only Cassandra. Another tear slid down her face, and her hands were clenched in their bindings, trembling. ‘Do you know, Cassandra?’ he pressed, sensing the crisis in her. ‘Are they dead, and you never told me?’

  ‘No!’ It came torn from her, her head tossing up, her red gaze brimming with pain. ‘I mean, I don’t know. I was just told to tell you they were safe. I never knew any more than that. I’m sorry, Dow.’

  But Dow allowed no forgiveness into his stare. His family had been undefended, subject to any manner of torment and atrocity of war – and all the while he’d just carried on blithely on board the Snout, trusting all was well, because of her.

  Agatha Harp was equally merciless. ‘You seek absolution, Laundress? From who? Dow? What you have done to him is terrible enough. But what of your actions overnight? That is monstrosity of a higher order. Can the dead forgive you?’

  Cassandra reared up in her grief. ‘That was your fault!’ she accused. ‘You were going to take over the ship! You left us no choice.’

  ‘And what if Dow had ever become too much trouble?’ the captain asked coldly. ‘Did you have final orders regarding him too, from your superiors? Would he have tasted your poison one day?’

  Cassandra stared as if the very suggestion was insane. ‘No! I would never have touched Dow! I always did the best I could for him. They would have locked him up years ago if not for me. I was his friend.’ And when this statement met only derisive silence, the panic in her rose further. ‘No, listen! I saved Dow’s life! I saved it from him.’ She glared at the army officer at her side. ‘He was the one with the orders. Terrible orders. He told me. Dow was never going to make it home, no matter what happened.’

  Agatha Harp turned her hard stare to Oliver again. ‘Is this true, Colonel?’

  Colonel Oliver only smiled.

  ‘It’s true!’ Cassandra insisted. ‘You remember, Dow, the night you went across the sand – that’s why I made up all those things about Nell. To make sure you’d leave the ship and go after her! That was the day he told me that you weren’t to live to see the Twin Isles again. He was going to kill you on the way home, or sooner, maybe even that very night! I had to get you off the ship. And the only place to send you was Banishment.’ Suddenly her passion all dropped away, broken. ‘But then he made the captain go after you anyway. Even Banishment wasn’t far enough.’

  ‘Is it so, Colonel?’ the captain persisted. ‘You went after Dow only to kill him?’

  Oliver laughed. ‘What children you all are. If Dow Amber had been allowed to join together with the Heretic Kings in pushing for peace, it would have been a disaster for our cause. So of course I went after him. And yes, once his usefulness at Banishment was at an end, I had my orders. The War Master is tired of him, tired of the whole charade. It was time to end it.’

  Dow stared at Cassandra, bent in private misery again. Could it all be true, what she claimed? In some warped way had she truly been trying to save him, sending him off to Banishment full of fears for Nell. But why not just tell him the truth? Why not unmask Oliver for what he was?

  Johannes was frowning immensely, and might have been wondering the same thing, for when he spoke he said, ‘I don’t understand you, Cassandra. You most of all. Oh, I’m appalled by our War Master, and by the likes of Oliver here, so enamoured to the slaughter of battle that he has lost all decency . . .’

  Colonel Oliver only rolled his eyes, and shifted his bandaged leg for comfort.

  ‘. . . but you, Cassandra, you confound me. Yes, Laundresses are expert in many dark arts, poison among them. But I knew you, girl. We all did. You had friends on this ship. By all the deeps, you taught Dow how to read! You’re no obedient killer. So why? What reward could have made it worthwhile?’

  Cassandra straightened. ‘I did it for no reward,’ she stated, as if with remembered dignity. ‘I am indeed no killer, and took no pleasure in it – but I don’t regret what I did last night. I’m loyal to my Order, and I follow the commands I’m given.’

  Johannes squinted, as if trying to peer through her very skin, then shook his head. ‘It’s not enough. Such crimes, merely to follow orders? No. You are not hollow. A heart beats in you. So what kept you faithful to Oliver, when clearly you hate the man? What steeled you to murder, if you didn’t want to do it?’

  Her heart . . .

  And Dow remembered then. Through the unfolding catastrophes of so many revelations, he remembered – and realised that Cassandra had acted not for reward or cause or thing at all, but for someone. And it was not Colonel Oliver.

  ‘What did he say to you?’ Dow asked.

  Cassandra stared at him, confused.

  ‘What did Damien Tender say to you, that day in the War Room? You told him you didn’t want to come on this voyage, that you weren’t suited – and the reason you told him that was because you knew it might end like this. Your mistresses had already explained it all, and you were ashamed. You wouldn’t even look me in the eye.’

  Even as he spoke, Dow was assessing old memories anew; her strange behaviour early in the voyage, as if she hoped they would be forced back; the way she avoided him, guiltily he recognised now, the friend she had always betrayed secretly, yet whom she did not want to betray openly . . .

  But she had done it anyway, for the War Master. ‘He made you stay to talk to him. So what did he say to you, when you two were alone, that turned you into someone capable of doing this?’

  ‘He . . .’ She faltered. ‘Nothing. He didn’t turn me into anything I wasn’t already.’

  But Agatha Harp was nodding, as if recalling the same scene. ‘Did he threaten you? Is that it? He threatened Captain Fletcher, I know. Did he promise you disgrace if you failed? Or death?’

  Cassandra lifted her chin. ‘He did no such thing,’ she asserted, anger and pride in her eyes. ‘He is not as you think. He is wholly honourable.’

  ‘How can you say that? After he has used you so terribly for such a vile purpose?’

  ‘No,’ said the laundress. Then, with devastating simplicity, ‘He loves me.’

  There was an aghast silence.

  ‘Loves you?’ exclaimed the captain.

  Then, awfully, Colonel Oliver was laughing. ‘Oh, wake up, girl,’ he said, with a withering glance to Cassandra. ‘Loves you? Are you blind?’

  ‘What are you on about, Colonel?’ demanded Agatha Harp. ‘Was this girl the War Master’s lover, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No! Far worse than that.’ The army officer seemed to have a sour taste in his mouth. ‘It’s what he does sometimes, with his orphan girls. He knows their weak spot, you see. From when they were children. They had mothers aplenty growing up with the Laundresses – but no fathers. Except, that is, for Damien Tender. The great War Master. They all adored him. What better father could there be? Now, of course, those girls are all Laundresses themselves, in the War Master’s service, and loyal one and all. But when he needs one of them to do something particularly nasty for him, when he needs their special loyalty – that’s when he calls them in for a private interview.’

  Cassandra shivered suddenly, and Oliver nodded at her, his gaze knowing.

  ‘Did he start by talking about your mother? How he actually knew her in person, before she died; how they were close? How in fact the man you’ve been told was your dead father wasn’t really your father at all; only, you couldn’t be told who your real fathe
r was, because he was someone too important? Did he say it was time you knew the truth?’

  Agatha Harp was looking sick. ‘Oh, by all that’s infernal, he couldn’t . . .’

  Cassandra had stiffened. ‘It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand!’ And the belief in her eyes was fire-bright. ‘He has so many enemies. If anyone knew he had a wife and a daughter, we’d have been targets. But blood is blood. He could always see it in me, he said so. That’s why he knew he could trust me, that’s why he knew I wouldn’t let him down on this voyage, no matter how horrible things got. He knew I’d be strong, like him. And I was!’

  ‘Oceans preserve us!’ said Colonel Oliver, shaking his head in disgust. ‘They always fall for the tale: the War Master secretly married to some woman from the factories. It’s pathetic.’

  Cassandra rounded on him furiously. ‘You’re lying! You lie about everything!’

  ‘You daft girl, he’s told me.’ The contempt was incontrovertible. ‘By my count he’s had half a dozen daughters at least from among you orphans! He’s not your father. He never knew your mother. You aren’t his daughter. You aren’t anything. You killed all those people for a man who’s already forgotten your name!’

  Dow saw Cassandra’s gaze go blank with terror, but what happened next was a blur. Later, it would be obvious to all that Laundresses were trained not only in poisons, but in other lethal arts, and in skills of concealment as well – as perhaps Oliver should have recalled, before uttering his taunts. All Dow knew at the time was that Cassandra surged from her chair, her hands somehow jerking free from their bindings to whip up to her bird’s nest of hair and pull something forth from the tresses, before she hurled herself shrieking at the colonel.

  There was a flurry, then the guards were heaving her – she was already calm again– off him, and the colonel was convulsing where he sat, the handle of a short knife protruding from his heart.

  *

  After the mayhem had settled – after Oliver’s body was taken away; and after Cassandra was locked back in the brig, stripped and searched from head to toe and declared clean of weapons, then tied more firmly than before – the meeting resumed.