Treasures of the Deep

by Andrew McGahan

  Despair would possess him them, and he would withdraw to his cabin, sometimes for days on end, losing all interest in the state of the ship or in his own condition, not bothering to wash or change clothes, or even to eat, and ignoring Pietru’s enquiring knocks on his door.

  But eventually the demands of his body would reawaken in him – hunger, restlessness – and he would rise and emerge to the day, and begin work on some new project of restoration about the ship.

  So passed a year.

  The second ghost appeared to Pietru a few weeks after the first.

  The scapegoat had been avoiding the foredeck ever since he had beheld the first apparition. When Roland asked why, he had replied, Old man is still there. He’s always there. Don’t want to go near him.

  That was bad enough. But now Roland noticed that Pietru had become reluctant even to venture onto the main deck. When he did, he would shuffle nervously along the rails, glancing often to the foot of the mainmast, and giving the central region of the deck the widest berth he could.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ Roland demanded finally. He was on the main deck to fill a bucket from one of the rain-collecting barrels, and Pietru was creeping elaborately along the left-hand rail, in the same way, in pantomime, a thief might sneak past a sleeping guard dog.

  The scapegoat ducked his head, nodding towards the mainmast. ‘I don’t like her,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t want her to look at me.’

  ‘What her?’

  ‘Can’t you see? The woman?’

  Roland’s impatience shrivelled up. He peered in sudden dread at the mast. ‘You can see a woman there?’

  Pietru nodded, shuddering. ‘Young woman. Girl. Pretty, maybe, once. But now she’s dead. She has blood all over her dress.’

  Roland shook his head. It was ridiculous. There was nothing and no one there, and the sun shone clear in a blue sky, leaving no shadows in which even the most fevered imagination might conjure a shape. And yet far from disbelief, he felt only an awful certainty that something really was there. Again, Pietru’s tone was too genuine, too sure, to be dismissed.

  ‘Do you know her?’ he asked faintly.

  Pietru gave a groan. ‘Don’t know her. Don’t want to know her. The noises in her head – they hurt. Like broken glass.’

  Broken glass? Images came to Roland of jagged slivers, and anger, and madness. Is that what Pietru meant? That the ghost was crazed? But who was she? No woman had ever sailed on the Revenge, not since the day of its launch, so why would such a spectre appear here now?

  ‘Has she said anything?’ he asked, fighting a nameless panic within himself. ‘Do you know what she wants?’

  Pietru thought hard, searching for the right words. ‘She doesn’t speak, not to me. Doesn’t want me. I think she’s looking for someone else.’

  ‘For who? For me?’

  ‘Not you, not me. Someone else.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone else.’

  The scapegoat shrugged. ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  On the first anniversary of his captaincy, he and Pietru having been alone on the ship now for an entire year, Roland was moved by a nostalgic whim to study a precious document in his cabin. It was one of the Revenge’s sea charts, the only one that had survived the destruction of the mutinies. It was slashed and stained, but legible still, and showed the northern half of the world: the Four Isles, the Middle Sea and the Outer Ocean.

  How far – Roland wondered, staring at this map – had the Revenge drifted since its capture by the Fish, some six hundred days ago in all? And where, in the wilderness of the world’s oceans, were they now?

  He had no real way of discovering. The ship’s navigational instruments – the sextants, the compasses, the time pieces – had all been lost or destroyed in the earlier chaos, and in any case the books that could have taught him how to use such instruments had also vanished. All Roland was left with were the few half-remembered lessons in navigation he had attended in his first months on board, and the sun and the stars above as a guide.

  True, by reading the position of the constellations at night, and by marking the track of the sun overhead by day, and by knowing the date and season, Roland could gauge reasonably well the ship’s latitude. Such calculations confirmed indeed what the cool and rainy weather already suggested, that they had drifted into the middle and temperate zones of the sea, roughly halfway between the equator and the pole.

  But their longitude? Where they stood east or west? In which body of water they even floated, the Middle Sea or the Outer Ocean? There Roland was blind, for to figure longitude one needed accurate clocks and detailed tables of figures and a sextant, none of which he possessed.

  In this regard then, the Revenge was lost without hope. Still, Roland studied the map hungrily. It was the landmasses that drew him, the images of the four great Isles, green and gold jewels set amid the blue wasteland. How beautifully their coastlines were traced in ink, all crinkled with harbours and bays. If he could only sight such a shore again with his own eyes.

  And who knew? Maybe the Revenge was near land even now? Maybe a coast waited just beyond the horizon? Oh, Roland no longer hoped that the Fish would ever allow itself to be washed aground, but if they at least drifted close enough to land to see it, to smell it, what a wonder that would be. To inhale the scents of earth again, to behold forests, or the glimmer of city lights, to know that life went on beyond this prison of white ropes …

  Why, what was even happening now across the Four Isles? What of the war? Had it been won yet, or lost? Were fleets still battling upon the seas? Or were they all at home again in peace? And what about all those who had been lost meanwhile? Did people still remember what had befallen the Revenge, and speculate about its fate? Or had the ship been forgotten, just another vessel sacrificed to the tumult, never to be seen again?

  Loneliness assailed Roland as he gazed at the map, and tears threatened in his eyes. Forget the war and the ship – did anyone remember him, or wonder where he was? His father was dead, but his mother had still been alive at the time of the Revenge’s capture – did she at least still think of Roland sometimes, and hope for his return? Or after six hundred days had even she given up, accepting that he was drowned, and would never come home?

  It wasn’t fair.

  It had never been fair.

  Nothing Roland had ever done deserved this …

  He might have wept then. But suddenly a new thought intruded, driving self-pity away. Six hundred days in the grip of the Fish … that was a long time. A very long time for a hull to be squeezed by the white ropes.

  Was there a limit to how long the ship could survive like this? The tales of Rope Fish that Roland remembered from his childhood gave little clear indication. Sometimes, those stories said, entangled ships had lingered so eternally that the crews had finally scuttled their own vessels to put an end to it. But there were also tales of hulls fracturing under a Fish’s grasp, and ships sinking rapidly with all hands. So which version was right? For that matter, from where did these reports and accounts originate anyway, if no one had ever survived a Rope Fish to tell of the experience?

  Roland could not say. But he decided abruptly that he must inspect the ship forthwith. When had he last even visited the lower decks, or checked the level of the bilge? Anything might be happening down there.

  He stashed the map away, took up a lamp, then descended through the gun decks, gazing about in distaste. How gloomy it all was, away from the neatness of the restored stern castle; down here everything still remained in the violent disarray of the mutinies, the mess compounded by nearly two years’ worth of dust and salt and mould. The timber frames still looked sound enough to Roland’s inexpert eye, but all other materials – hammocks, bedding, discarded clothes – were stiffened with mildew, or rotting.

  In the levels below the gun decks, complete darkness waited. Roland lit his lamp and ventured on, descending to the lowest hold. He hadn’t been this far down since his days of banishment, and it felt
now like visiting another world, one grim and cold and silent. Except, the silence wasn’t utter. Faint creaks and groans came to Roland’s straining ear – and then a more deadly sound, the slow plop and plunk of water dripping into water.

  He reached the hatchway to the hold, and peering down, with the lamp extended, saw the telltale black gleam. The bilge had overflowed and the hold was flooded, two or three feet deep by the look. And here and there about the walls, water seeped from dark, elongated stains.

  It was happening already then. The pressure from the white ropes was slowly wrenching at the hull, opening fractures in the timbers and the nicre sheath. They might be only hairline cracks as yet, but no doubt they would in time grow into open breaches, letting in the sea.

  And then the Revenge would sink.

  Roland had to do something.

  First, obviously, he must employ the pumps, and empty out the water that had already flooded in. It would be a dreadful chore, a labour of many days, for the pumps were meant to be operated by teams of four men at a time, and Roland was alone. Pietru would be no help. The scapegoat had the strength, yes, but not the patience to stick at a prolonged task.

  But that was only the beginning, for even if Roland emptied the hold for now, the greater problem would remain. The Fish was crushing the ship. No amount of pumping would help, once the cracks widened too far.

  Ah … but maybe here Pietru might be of more use?

  Roland ascended to the dim light of the gun decks, and did not have to search for long – on the Second he found the scapegoat in the middle of one of his patrols, shambling along and muttering happily to himself. In former days, Pietru had insisted that Roland accompany him always on these endless meanderings, but of late he seemed quite content to roam alone – a mercy for which Roland was grateful. But he apprehended the scapegoat now, and dragged him down to the usual gunport on the Third.

  ‘Rowand hungry?’ asked Pietru.

  ‘No, not yet. I don’t want food. I want you to talk to the Fish. I want you to tell it something. Can you do that?’

  The scapegoat furrowed his brow. ‘Talk to Fish?’

  ‘Yes. If you can ask for food, then surely you can ask other things. I want you to tell it that it is hurting the ship. It’s squeezing us too tight. It will crack the hull open soon, and sink us. We don’t want that to happen. Neither should the Fish, because then it would have nothing left to hold on to. So it needs to stop squeezing so hard. Do you understand?’

  Pietru heaved a huge puff of breath. ‘Stop squeezing so hard, or we sink, and we don’t want that, not Fish either. Yes. I understand.’

  ‘And can you tell the Fish?’

  ‘Don’t know. Can try.’

  And with that, the scapegoat knelt to the gunport.

  The communion happened as it ever did, Pietru’s hand gradually consumed by the white caul. The scapegoat was talking to himself all the while, audibly at first, repeating stop squeezing so hard, stop squeezing so hard, but then falling away in indistinguishable murmurings.

  A long time passed, Roland watching anxiously. Was it possible, what he asked of the scapegoat? Could the mind of the simpleton, and the mind of the Fish, truly exchange an abstract concept? Not a simple request for food, but a matter of cause and effect, of long-term consequence?

  Pietru looked up suddenly, his face strained. ‘Fish understands. Fish doesn’t want ship to break. Fish can squeeze less hard.’

  Roland stared in amazement. And then a dazzling notion struck him. If this much was possible, then maybe—

  ‘Ask it to let us go!’ he blurted. ‘Tell it – tell it to just let us go!’

  Pietru frowned. ‘Let us go?’

  Roland nodded fervently. ‘Then we can go home!’ He gave no thought just then as to how that might be done exactly, how two people alone, neither of them seamen, could sail and navigate a ship that normally needed a crew of hundreds. The idea itself was too glorious. ‘Tell it now!’

  The scapegoat hunched his shoulders doubtfully, but turned nevertheless to the gunport, his brow set in concentration.

  But very soon he was shaking his head. ‘No. No no no …’ It came out in a moan, and he turned in distress to Roland. ‘Fish won’t let us go, doesn’t want to. Fish likes us. Fish loves us. It wants to keep us forever.’

  Roland felt his blaze of hope fragment into a puff of embers. Yes … yes, of course. He should have known. It was one thing to encourage the Fish to preserve the ship, quite another to expect release.

  ‘But it will stop squeezing?’ he verified.

  ‘Yes, it will. But never let us go.’

  And with that, Roland had to be satisfied.

  Only much later, when one of his black moods was upon him, did it occur to Roland that perhaps he had made a terrible mistake. By then he had pumped out the flooded hold, and done what he could to caulk the leaks, and the Revenge was as sound again as it was ever likely to be.

  But why had he done any of it at all?

  Why not let the ship sink?

  How else was this going to end? Pietru had said it, the Fish was never going to let them go. So if they did not sink, then … then what? Would they just go on like this, lingering and lingering? For years more, decades more? That was madness, surely. Better to finish it, long before then …

  And yet … no.

  In his heart, even in the midst of his deepest spells of misery and despair, Roland was still not ready to die.

  So passed four years.

  The third spectre appeared to Pietru shortly after the second. Its presence came to Roland’s attention when he realised one day that noon had passed and yet the scapegoat had not delivered the usual rations. When Roland searched out Pietru and pressed him about this, the scapegoat, lip quivering, broke down and admitted that he was too scared to go down to the gunport.

  ‘Scared of what?’ Roland demanded.

  ‘There’s a man on the stairs. Can’t go past him.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Awful man, all white, with blood in his mouth.’

  Roland groaned internally. ‘Show me.’

  Reluctant yet obedient, Pietru led him to the main stairway and they descended. But on the second deck down, the scapegoat paused and pointed. ‘There,’ he said, indicating the next flight below.

  Roland looked, but as he had expected, the stairs were empty.

  ‘There’s no man,’ he said, exasperation growing.

  ‘He’s there. He’s looking up at us.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop this, Pietru. There’s no one on this ship but us. These people you think you see – they aren’t real. They can’t be.’

  The scapegoat shook his head stubbornly. ‘This one is real. I’ve seen him before. Long ago. Far away from here.’

  Roland blinked. ‘You … you know him?’

  ‘Not his name. Don’t know his name. But I know his face. I saw him before he was dead like this. More than once. It was on the big ship, the enormous ship, before it was burned. I went there sometimes with my old captain, to big meetings in a big room, with lots of kings and lords. I saw him there. He was one of the kings. Big man in a gold crown. Before he died.’ Roland gazed in wonder at the empty steps. A ghostly king? And not only that, but an actual person, someone that Pietru had seen in the flesh on visits to the long-since-burned Twelfth Kingdom? Once again, bewilderment blew in Roland’s heart. What could any of it mean?

  ‘How … how did he die?’ he asked the scapegoat.

  Dread haunted Pietru’s eyes as he gazed down. ‘No air. It all turned to poison. Blood in his throat. And not just him, others too. Other kings, and dukes, and barons. All screaming. All dead, piled up.’

  Poison? Suffocation? Kings and dukes and barons? A mass murder? Roland had never heard of any such event. He stared again to the place upon the stairs. ‘But why is he on this ship? What does he want here?’

  The scapegoat’s voice was no more than a whisper. ‘There is someone he blames, someone he’s waiting for.’r />
  ‘Who?’

  Pietru didn’t seem to hear. He was staring beyond the stairs now, into infinity. ‘Other ghosts will come, king says. More like him.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘Hundreds of ghosts. So many dead, so angry.’

  Fury ignited in Roland. This was all craziness. There was no spirit on the stairs. Not there, not anywhere. There was no such thing. He rounded on the scapegoat. ‘Stop it! I don’t want to know. I don’t care if you see a thousand more ghosts, stop telling me about them, okay?’

  Pietru bent his head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to see them.

  I’m scared of them. But I can’t help it. I can’t not see them.’

  ‘I don’t care. Just shut up about them. And go down by the other stairs to get the fish from now on. I’m not going to starve because you make these things up in your head. Do you understand me?’

  Miserable, Pietru nodded, and went by the other stairs, and Roland got his fish as usual. And in the months that followed, whatever the scapegoat did or did not see, he said not a word about it.

  Five and a half years into their ordeal, a ship came.

  Ever since he had assumed the captaincy, Roland had searched the horizon three times every day, at dawn and noon and dusk, in the hope of sighting a sail, another vessel in all the waste of the ocean. Never had he been rewarded. So when he happened to glance out across the sea one mid-morning to behold a distant white speck, the shock was immense.

  A ship! Another ship had found them!

  He rushed to the rail, shouting and waving his arms madly. The vessel was miles off yet, advancing from the south, and of course its crew would not be able to see or hear him yet, but they must have noticed the Revenge itself by now, and would surely come closer to investigate.