Susan’s impatience ignited again. All day it had been growing in her, like an ache. She’d hurried carelessly through her chores – the washing of the sheets and the scrubbing of the floors – until at last, while her mother’s back was turned, she’d slipped off without permission before fault could be found, or more work assigned. She’d felt so hot and flushed by then that it was almost as if she was coming down with a fever. That was why she’d come climbing up to the top of East Head on such a bleak and rain-threatened evening. She needed fresh air.
And yet it hadn’t really helped. The salt wind had cleared her head a little, but there was still a strange and unsettling quiver that pulsed in her limbs. And despite the winter air, even though she was dressed only in her indoor clothes, she didn’t feel cold at all, but uncomfortably warm …
Oh, stop it. She was imagining things. There was nothing wrong with her, at least nothing that a trip to Stone Port wouldn’t cure. And tomorrow, finally, she would be making that trip.
She climbed to her feet and studied the fishing boats down in the channel. There were close to forty in all – most of Stromner’s fleet – spread out in ragged lines to thread the Rip. The faces of their crews were not really recognisable from this high up, but she could identify each man anyway, for she knew every vessel by sight, and who rode in which craft.
Yes, there was her father’s boat: her dad was at the tiller, and her brother and two cousins were stowing away the nets. They’d already passed through the Rip and were nearly at the gate in the Stone Port sea wall, for they must offload their fish every night before returning to Stromner.
Susan watched unmoving, the strange pulse beating inside her, until they vanished into the harbour. She’d always envied her brother and cousins, sailing off every morning to fish. Not because she had any interest in sailing or fishing, but because they got to visit Stone Port every night.
And yet the privilege was wasted on them! They made no use of the town. They never entered any of the stores where the fine dresses were sold, or attended any of the great salons where the grand ladies paraded – all they seemed to care about were the wharfs and the price of fish!
Well, not tomorrow.
Tomorrow there would be no fishing at all. Instead, her father had declared a holiday, and was going to take Susan and her mother – at very long last – to Stone Port on a shopping trip.
It was not so great a concession, actually. After tomorrow, no one could stop Susan going to Stone Port anyway, either with one of her friends – a boy, maybe, who could borrow a boat – or even on her own, rowing a skiff. Her father was merely bowing to necessity, and no doubt he planned to keep her under close guard while she explored the town.
But what did it matter? She would be there at last, and that was only the beginning. Susan spun where she stood, so that she could stare down to her home village, huddled between East Head and the beach of the inner shore.
Stromner was not exactly the end of the earth, she supposed. It was neat and pretty enough, with its white-painted houses and shell-lined yards, and its long pier spearing out into the Claw, and its spare boats lined up bravely on the beach. Its folk, too, were as well-off as humble fishermen could expect to be in these Settlement times, when everyone (so the adults said) had it harder than before.
But even so, it seemed to Susan an unutterably small and backward place. Why, there were scarcely any proper streets, just beaten tracks wandering amid the grass, and no shops at all …
No, she couldn’t live her whole life in such a setting. Her future lay elsewhere – somewhere with people and lights and events. Stone Port maybe – but even that might not be big enough. Maybe it would be Lonsmouth, the great city that stood at the top of the Claw, visible some nights from Stromner as a glow against the clouds on the horizon, a promise of unimaginable faraway delights.
Of course, sixteen or not, Susan knew she couldn’t simply up and move away. To survive in a city like Lonsmouth she would need a job, and money of her own. Or a husband perhaps, although that was probably for later, much later; she would have to meet someone first. Maybe several someones, between whom she would then make her choice. And that would all take time. But at least tomorrow in Stone Port she could make a start …
Anticipation flared brightly in her for a moment, then faded. Tomorrow was an age away. In the meantime, there were duller affairs to be endured: for one, a family dinner was to be held at the inn tonight in honour of her birthday.
Oh, it would be pleasant enough in the main, but at some point she would be dragged up onto the dais in front of the whole village, and presented with her first cup of whisky to drink – as everyone was when they turned sixteen. Susan had already tasted whisky in secret with her friends and thought it horrible, and that the whole ritual was hopelessly old-fashioned, but she’d have to play along and force it down anyway, for that was how things had always been done in Stromner, and always would be.
She sighed again in vexation and spun about once more, briefly taking in the entire wide view from East Head – the limitless sea, the Rip, the boats, Stone Port and the Ship Kings fortress; all the world she had ever known. Then she turned away to begin the steep walk back down to Stromner.
She wasn’t to know she would never see any of it again.
Later that night, the Gale family made their way through the blowing rain and winter darkness to reach the door of the Stromner inn. They left their coats in the vestibule, then passed quickly through the forward bar – a dim little room occupied only by a few older folk, chatting quietly around the small fire there – and on into the Hold Hall, where a greater fire was blazing in the giant hearth, and where maybe two hundred villagers were packed at the long tables, eating and drinking and conversing at a roar.
The inn wasn’t always as crowded as this, but when a Ship Kings fleet was in port people had money to spend and were eager to gather and gossip – as Susan knew well. She was no stranger to the Hold Hall. Even as a young child she had darted in here on many a night in search of her father at her mother’s behest, and since the age of fourteen she’d been allowed to pass her evenings here with the adults, and to drink beer, if not whisky. So she took no special notice of the scene as they came in, even though this was a special night for her. The Hall merely seemed its usual shadowy self, with the same haze of smoke and beery sweat hanging in the air as ever.
The family pushed through the crowd to arrive at a table in front of the great hearth – a much sought-after position that had been claimed for the night by various relatives and friends, who all rose to welcome Susan with smiles and congratulations. She smiled in return, doing her best to look happy.
For after all, she was, wasn’t she? Oh, true, this kind of existence might never be enough to satisfy her – to spend her evenings eternally within the same walls, with the same faces surrounding her – but that didn’t mean it wasn’t to be enjoyed for the moment, or that she didn’t love her family.
Of course it didn’t. And yet the impatience still gnawed at her, the wanting for this night to be over, and for tomorrow to come. And beyond that she still felt strangely hot, her skin flushed; and yet she was shivery too, as if deep inside she was actually cold. Something wasn’t right.
But she put it aside, and forced herself to laugh with the well-wishers up and down the table. It was quite a gathering; her parents and her brother; her uncle and his whole family; the Swans – Barnaby and Edith – who were neighbours, and whose five young daughters Susan often babysat; an old great-aunt who was mostly deaf and lived alone.
But soon enough Susan gravitated to the far end of the table to sit with her three best friends, whom she’d also been allowed to invite – Magda Netmender, Freida Wash and Kerry Tussock. The party grew a little livelier then, as things always did when the four of them were together; they were not shy girls. And tonight – as Susan was the first of them to come of age – there was an extra note of self-importance and excitement between the four, for one was an adult now, a
nd that changed many things.
Especially when it came to boys. Heads huddled together, the four cast appraising gazes about the hall. Who was here tonight?
Well – over there was York Deepner, who had won the Stone Port race this year in his father’s boat, and who was also the most handsome of all the Stromner boys, the girls had long agreed. But even in their fondest dreams they all knew he was too mature – twenty-one – and too popular to ever notice them. Older girls were already fighting for his attention, with Mona Strand the current favourite. Rumour had it they would be married in the spring.
Well then, there was Gerrant Carpenter. He was closer to their own age, eighteen, and handsome too – if he didn’t smile, for his teeth were bad. Ah, but his family was so poor. His father had lost two boats to storms in the last five years and had turned to drink, and Gerrant was reduced to labouring for wages over on the Stone Port docks, rowing over every day in a skiff, for he could not afford a room in the town. He had been a cheerful boy when he was younger, but his troubles had made him grim and silent, and the girls were unsure how to approach him.
Who else? Well, there was Sam Plover, also eighteen, cavorting by the fire with his older brothers. Yes – but he had courted Susan for a time last summer, until she’d broken it off because he talked of nothing more than fishing and boats. He was terribly boyish for his age. Too rough, too careless. He would never do. And neither would Jorge Strand – Mona’s brother – who was too short and fat. Or Will Havelock, who was strange, and had liked to pinch them when they were little, hard enough to bruise.
No, there were scant pickings to be found in the inn tonight. Truth be told, the four friends were often of the opinion that there were scant pickings among all the local boys; the good ones were taken, and those left over weren’t up to much. The better specimens – according to Magda, Freida and Kerry, who’d all been allowed to travel more widely than Susan – weren’t to be found in Stromner at all, but rather in the busy streets of Stone Port and Lonsmouth. City boys – now they were interesting!
For New Islanders, at least.
The real truth – one the girls admitted to each other only in whispers – was that even the smartest New Island youth compared not one whit to the young Ship Kings officers to be seen about town when a fleet was in, so tall and dark and proud in their bright uniforms. But such thoughts were wildest fantasy. Proper New Island girls didn’t step out with Ship Kings men, and that was that!
All of which the four girls had happily discussed and debated a hundred times before – and yet tonight there was no fun in it for Susan.
She still felt strange. The restless ache in her limbs wouldn’t go away, like a faint pain that came from everywhere, and her head was too light. She had no appetite either – she barely sipped at her mug of beer, and only picked at her meal. No one else seemed to notice amid all the chatter, but more and more she found herself detached from everyone, as if she were only acting her role as the birthday girl, and watching on from outside of herself.
Also, the room seemed to have grown darker, as if the lamps were being dimmed. She stared about. Was there a problem with the hearth’s chimney; was it not drawing properly? The smoke was surely thicker than it had been before. And yet she couldn’t smell smoke, at least no more than normal.
But how tumbledown the old Hall looked, now that she took notice of it. Plaster was peeling from the walls, cobwebs drifted in the high corners, and the crowd’s laughter echoed emptily in the stairwell at the far end. There were rooms at the top of those stairs, Susan knew, meant for visitors – but there were far more rooms than there were visitors these days. The old folk said that was because of the war. Stromner had been busier in the old days, they said, before the Ship Kings came and imposed the Settlement, which took so much wealth and trade away.
And when Susan glanced again at her fellow villagers, she saw that in a way they matched their aging Hall; there were so few young faces in the crowd, especially of her own age. She had often heard her parents lamenting this very fact. Half a generation had never been born, they reckoned, for many of the men who should have been fathers had died in the war, and the rest had been away so long – the fighting had lasted twenty years – that their wives had gone childless for those same two decades.
It was only recently indeed that the last of the war prisoners – those men captured by the Ship Kings and put to work in their fleets – had been allowed to return home. Right at the next table sat Vernon Shear, gaunt and withdrawn, who had come back to Stromner just three years ago – after a dozen spent in captivity – prematurely an old man.
He was with his wife Mathilde, who had waited for him faithfully all that time, while her own youth and fertility wasted away. Sitting in her lap was their precious baby boy, Nathaniel. The child himself seemed a happy thing; but if not for the war he might have been their fourth or fifth, rather then their first and very likely their only.
Susan blinked. Where were these portentous thoughts coming from?
And why was it so dark? She rubbed her eyes, but the haze didn’t clear. Alarm grew. She must be coming down with something – some kind of fever, hot and claustrophobic. But she didn’t want to be sick. If she was sick she might not be able to go to Stone Port tomorrow, and that would be a disaster.
Her roaming gaze strayed to the dimmest corner of the Hall, and there alone on a bench, a whisky glass at her side, sat Toper Maggie.
The blind woman.
Even on such a crowded night, a space was cleared about her. She was a plump creature, both in body and face, and while she was by no means young, her red cheeks and constant beaming smile – almost idiotic it seemed at times – gave her a strangely childlike demeanour. Or it would have, if not for the terrible white emptiness of her eyes.
Susan stared, not knowing why she was suddenly so drawn to the lone figure. Like all the village children, she had grown up at first frightened of Toper Maggie, because of those alabaster eyes, and then somewhat scornful of her, for as everyone knew the blind woman drank too much (and so her name, for that’s what toper meant) and laughed to herself all the time, even when no one had said anything funny.
But that scorn aside, Susan (and everyone else, she suspected) had always remained a little afraid of Maggie. For as well as drinking too much, it was said that the blind woman could cast spells and mix potions, and even read the future.
Susan didn’t believe that – no one could tell the future, and there was no such thing as magic. Still, she’d heard that people visited the blind woman secretly in times of trouble, to seek cures for their ills or advice for their problems. And watching her now Susan could almost see why. Those white eyes were mesmerising, in a horrible way …
It was then that she realised her friends had stopped talking – had perhaps stopped talking some while ago, only she’d been too distracted to notice – and were staring at her in concern.
‘Susan,’ asked Kerry, ‘are you all right?’
Susan smiled and forced herself to nod, but the action brought on a spasm of nauseating dizziness. She swayed in her seat, and her friends frowned, but before they could do anything, there was a stir from the other end of the table; her father was rising, and so were the Elders, up on the dais.
It was time for the official toast.
‘Susan Gale,’ announced one of the old men, ‘you are summoned to stand forth.’
The Hall fell quiet. Susan swallowed and stood up, concealing the fact – with a hand on the table – that her legs felt too weak to support her. She stumped numbly to the dais, barely aware of the smiles and nods from the crowd as she passed through. The world seemed to have drawn into a tunnel, and she could only see directly in front of her.
But she must not let it show. If she could get through this moment, then she could go home and climb into bed, and tomorrow the sickness – whatever it was – would have passed.
Old Tobias Gunning, the Chief Elder of the village council, was waiting for her with a kindl
y smile half-hidden in his beard. He held out a small silver cup, brimming with whisky. Had she been a boy, she contemplated in vague horror, it would have been a whole mug of the stuff – but thankfully girls were only expected to down the one dram.
Her father watching on proudly, Susan took the cup in a hand that felt clammy and cramped, the golden liquid within trembling as she held it high for all the crowd to see. In turn, everyone in the Hall raised their own mugs and glasses in readiness. The smell of the whisky made her want to vomit, but she would drink it anyway, and hold it down somehow.
‘To Susan Gale,’ called Tobias Gunning, ‘daughter of Stromner. May she have long life and happiness in her home and family!’
‘Daughter of Stromner,’ echoed the crowd.
Then everyone drank. Susan likewise tilted her cup to her mouth, but even as the whisky touched her lips, the dizziness gusted ferociously in her head and she staggered, the cup falling from her hands. She tried to straighten herself, one arm out, but only swayed all the worse, reeling about in a circle, mortified, for everyone was watching. What was wrong with her? Then she fell, her legs buckling and the floor rising up to slap her across the face.
There came an uncertain scatter of laughter from the crowd, as if at first some mistook her state for one of drunkenness. She would not have been the first sixteen-year-old to make the toast already somewhat worse for the wear. But then, as she tried to rise, and only fell again, there rose a concerned murmur and finally a cry of alarm: her mother.
A rush of movement followed, but for Susan it was all confusion. Hands lifted her into a chair, but she couldn’t sit upright; her limbs had gone boneless. Her head pounded, and it felt as if smoke was all around her, for she couldn’t see anything properly, the room was blurred and streaked with black. A face loomed close to hers, but it was distorted and unrecognisable, a leering stare, an open mouth …
Then a voice was crying a terrible thing. ‘Her eyes! Look at her eyes!’
Treasures of the Deep Page 4
