Treasures of the Deep

by Andrew McGahan

  But the vessel would be shrinking too, drawing away from her, fading into the sea haze, until its hull was lost below the horizon and only the white of the sails remained, growing smaller and dimmer, till they too sank away and vanished. Even then, in her mind’s eye, Lucy would picture the ship still, voyaging upon an ocean she could not see, an ocean that was so close, just beyond the horizon, but which was forever denied to her and to all folk who were landlocked. And a part of her would break painfully, every single time. She could not bear it, being left behind. She wanted to go, to see that ocean for herself. It was an ache without cure.

  ‘But I’m a girl,’ she added hotly, the old wound biting, ‘and so I can’t go, not unless I do what Nell did and become a scapegoat. But I don’t want to be a scapegoat. I just want to be a sailor. It’s not fair that I can’t be, and somehow, one day, I’m going to do it no matter what anyone says.’

  And her speech finished, Lucy sat blushing and stared stubbornly at her soup. Now, now the old man would laugh at her …

  But he didn’t laugh. ‘So that’s it,’ he mused after a time. ‘You want to go to sea; you’re meant to go to sea, you think, but not as a scapegoat? Well then, I see your problem, for there’s no other way, is there, for a girl to go off sailing, if not as scapegoat. Nothing has changed in that regard, has it, since Nell’s day. Not in the Kingdoms, anyway, though the Twin Islanders do things differently. The only women on our ships are still scapegoats alone.’

  She looked up at him, both grateful and defiant. ‘I know. But somehow … somehow I’m going to do it. And it has something do with Dow and Nell. They’re going to help me. Oh, I know that sounds mad. How can they help me? But I felt it even when I was a little girl and my mum first told me the stories. It was like I knew I had a place in the story too, somewhere. My own place.’

  ‘I see. Did you tell your mum all this?’

  ‘Yes. And she said don’t be silly. Girls don’t become sailors. I told some of Mum’s boyfriends too, the sailors she went with. I thought they’d understand. But they only laughed at me, and said the same thing: girls can’t ever become sailors; girls are only good for other things, and I’d find out soon enough what those things were. Unless the girls were scapegoats, that was. They were different. But like I said, I don’t want to be a horrible scapegoat.’

  The old man shrugged. ‘A scapegoat is a perfectly honourable thing to be, you know. But it’s not supposed to be something you choose, of course. Nell did, if the stories are true, but she invoked a very harsh fate for herself in the process, so I think you’re quite right to not want to go that way.’

  ‘That’s what my mum said. She said I wasn’t to dare think that I could do something like Nell did, just to get on a ship.’

  Rolly Fish considered for a moment in silence. ‘And in her tales, did your mum tell you about me, too, and my story?’

  ‘No. That was Miss Quill. She’s from the Home. She’s supposed to be a teacher but she doesn’t teach us anything, she just spies on us. Anyway, I heard her talking to one of the buyers – the buyers come and take away all the stuff we make. She was flirting with him, even though she’s old and he was old too, and she asked where he came from, and he said he was born near Shallow Corner even though he lived in Westhaven now, and she said, oh, then he must know old Rolly Fish, and the man said no, but he’d heard the story, and then they talked all about you, and the things you say happened to you.’

  The old man nodded calmly, his soup finished. ‘That makes sense, then. I was wondering where a girl your age had heard of me. I’m mostly forgotten about, these days, thankfully – and it’s been a very long while indeed since I’ve had anyone come calling in person, to ask me about it all. Twenty years or more, I’d guess. Yet here you are.’ His narrow eyes gave the briefest of twinkles. ‘So you think you have some link to Dow and Nell, do you?’

  She nodded fiercely. ‘And you met them, didn’t you? I mean, not before they went away, but after … after they were lost.’

  He tilted his head as if in doubt. ‘Let me see, they sailed off into the Doldrums over a hundred and sixty years ago. They were only young at the time, true, but even if they lived each to be a hundred years old, both of them would still be long dead by now: eighty years dead, at the very least. Correct? So how could I have met them? Do I look old enough for that? You don’t need to answer. I know I don’t. Judging by the way I look, I could scarcely have been born by the time their lives would have been ending. So clearly its impossible that I somehow encountered them, far away in the Barrier.’

  ‘But … but you were caught by the Rope Fish. That’s the story Miss Quill said you told everyone. And the Fish … it made you live for longer than normal, a long, long time … alone on your ship …’

  A laugh. ‘Yes. That’s my story. But no one believes a word of it, you know. No one ever has, not since the day I first arrived back here in the Kingdoms all those years ago, after my ordeal ended. After all, I’d been away for such a long time by then, many decades, and anyone who had known me well before I left was dead. Worse, even though I was already ninety years old by then, I didn’t look a day over thirty. So I had to be lying, didn’t I?’

  Lucy’s eyes were wide with wonder. ‘Then it is true?’

  ‘Oh yes. At least, I know that much of it really happened, though I won’t deny that some of it is confusing to me now, a little like a dream. But I can’t answer for all the stories that other people have made up about me since. Things have got mixed up over the years. So be warned, what you heard from your Miss Quill might not be right. For one, don’t go thinking I ever really knew Dow Amber or Ignella. I met them, briefly, yes. But we were not companions, and I learned very little about them in those strange few days.’

  Lucy blinked, because Ms Quill had given the impression that Rolly claimed to have known the two legendary figures well. But even if that wasn’t the case, so what! What mattered was that the core of the tale was true, he wasn’t denying that. He had really seen them with his own eyes.

  ‘Tell me what really happened then,’ she begged.

  He pondered a moment. Outside, the wind rose to a moan briefly, and through the rock of the floor Lucy felt a slow shudder – it was the surf, she realised, beating on the far side of the spit.

  Then the old man sighed. ‘You know, twenty years ago I would have refused, I would have sent you on your way. Back then, I was sick of telling it over and over, sick of being laughed at, because that’s why most people wanted to talk to me, just to see if I really believed the ridiculous things I said. That’s the reason I came all the way up here to this forsaken corner of Leone: because it’s about as far from my home – I was born and raised in Denez, way down in Creve – as I could get without leaving the Kingdoms altogether. But even distance didn’t stop people for a long time; they still sought me out.

  ‘Yet now it’s been a long time since anyone has bothered me. And lately … well, the truth is, I’ve finally started to feel worn out. And believe it or not, whatever age I might appear to be, I’m actually one hundred and ninety years old, so that feeling is long overdue. I used to wonder indeed if it would ever come. But at last it is here, and now I don’t think I have all that long left. Death will attend with me soon, as it should have long, long ago. And I’ve been wondering, what will happen to my story? Even if no one believes me, it’s true, and it should not be forgotten. So I’ve been thinking of writing it down as a memoir, before I go. In fact, I was thinking about making a start on it this very night, just before you knocked. So … so maybe it’s meant that you should be here, and that I should try it out on you first.’

  Lucy took an awed breath. ‘You mean, it’s fate?’

  The smile flickered again. ‘If it is, then I have learned – no one more than me – that fate is not something to be argued with.’ He straightened, gathered up his bowl and collected hers too. ‘Very well, I’ll tell you my tale. It won’t be quick, but we have all night. Normally I’d be off to bed early, so
as to be up and out fishing at first light.’ He raised his head, listening to the wind. ‘But by the sound of that, I won’t be going out tomorrow anyway.’

  He stacked the plates in the little kitchen and came back to the table. Sitting down he reached to a nearby shelf, took down a half-full bottle of wine and a clay cup, and poured himself a measure.

  ‘Are you comfortable?’ he asked her after taking a sip. ‘Is there anything you need before we begin?’

  Lucy shook her head wordlessly.

  ‘Very well then. I was only twenty when this all began, and my name wasn’t Rolly Fish back then, it was Roland of the Counting. And one thing you have to understand is that I had no intention of ever going to sea or of becoming a sailor. I’d never even set foot in a boat. But then came the war with New Island, and before I knew it I’d been called up. My father, who was a powerful man, arranged for me to be posted to what he thought would be a wonderful ship for his son. It was the Creve flagship, the Revenge.’ At the mention of the name, the old man’s gaze went faraway and sad. ‘His intentions were good, but oh, what a miserable time I had in my first months at sea, and how I hated that ship. And that was before I was even assigned to look after Pietru.’

  ‘Pietru, who was that?’

  Rolly Fish blinked. ‘Why, he was the ship’s scapegoat, of course. In those days, I thought him a fool. But I was wrong about that. It was Pietru, after all, who would later show me the secret to immortality. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let us go back, instead, to my first and only battle …’

  The wind had risen to a moaning wail across the cottage roof, and rain was hammering periodically on the tiles, by the time the old man paused in his telling to brew a pot of tea. Lucy could not tell how many hours had passed, but several times as he talked Rolly Fish had moved to stoke the dying fire, or to trim the guttering lamp, and the night was deep around them now.

  Through the floor and her stockinged feet, Lucy could feel a muffled thud and rumble: the surf on the far side of the spit, breaking relentlessly. The ocean must have whipped itself into a fury under the storm.

  Likewise the tumult of her thoughts.

  A ghost! Rolly Fish had just told her that he had met with an actual ghost, there on the foredeck of the doomed Revenge. And not just any ghost, but the ghost of Nathaniel Shear, the New Island fisherman who, according to the legend, had taken the young Dow Amber in and taught him to sail. Later, said the stories, the old man had, in his madness, plunged into the maw of the infamous Maelstrom, and almost taken Dow with him.

  Lucy had always found this mythical figure fascinating and frightening. And now Nathaniel Shear had risen from the deeps to walk again as grim spectre, waiting – as were other ghosts like him apparently – for a reckoning with none other than Dow Amber himself!

  Madness. The whole story was impossible. The attack of the Fish upon the Revenge, the horrible decline and death of the ship’s crew, Pietru’s strange communion with the monster, and lastly Roland’s discovery of eternal life … No, none of it could be credited for an instant.

  Yet Lucy believed it all. Every word.

  She had only to hear Rolly Fish’s voice as he told his tale, and to behold the sadness of his gaze, haunted by memories, to know that it was all true. And anyway, who would make up a tale in which the teller himself was such an odious character. No, if Rolly Fish had merely invented all this, then surely he would be the hero of the story, brave and dauntless, not the weak and selfish – why, even murderous – youth who was Roland of the Counting.

  The old man was sitting down again with two chipped mugs and the teapot, steam rising from the spout. ‘So,’ he asked of her, ‘are with you me so far? Do you understand what I’ve told you? All that talk of fate, and why the Revenge was taken by the Fish, and why the ghosts came?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘Because of Dow Amber.’

  Rolly Fish smiled, pouring the tea. ‘As you can imagine, that was a name for which I had little liking, when the ghost first told me. Dow Amber? All this had happened to me because of Dow Amber? I was furious.’

  And for a moment, watching wide-eyed, Lucy saw that anger did indeed flare in the old man’s gaze, before swiftly fading.

  ‘Of course, I knew very little about him then. At the time my ship was taken by the Fish, Dow Amber was not as famous as he would later become. This was early in the war, recall. At that stage Dow was known only as the New Island boy who had ridden the Maelstrom, and who had treacherously murdered Vincente of the Shinbone, and who had escaped from the Twelfth Kingdom on the day the war began. He was a wanted enemy, yes, but there was no hint then that he would become a leader, that we would muster a fleet of his own and sail off in search of a New World. I wouldn’t learn about any of that until much, much later. So when the ghost told me that my imprisonment on the Revenge was all for the sake of a criminal like Dow, I was not impressed.’

  Lucy was amazed all over again. So when the ghost told me … ‘Are you sure?’ she demanded. ‘Ghosts are really real?’

  The old man tilted his head. ‘Ghosts, everyone is always so interested in the ghosts, when I tell my tale. I must be mad, they say, to believe in such things. Well, mad or not, I know what I saw. And I saw hundreds of ghosts, before the end. The Revenge was crowded with them.’

  ‘Hundreds?’

  ‘Oh, at first there was just that old man on the foredeck. But as the months passed after Pietru’s death, I began to see, just as he had, all the other spectres. On the lower decks, on the stairwells and ladders, in the hold and in the rigging. Everywhere. I did not speak with them, I never learned their names, but I remember their faces to this day. So pained, so bitter, so sad. Men and women, children too, some by the look as rich as kings, others poor and ragged, others again soldiers and sea captains or common sailors.

  ‘And lastly, here and there, I even began to see the ghosts of my own shipmates, members of the crew of the Revenge, those who had died when the Fish first took us, or who had starved later in the months that followed, or who had killed themselves in despair. I never saw poor Pietru, thank the deeps. He seems to have found his own proper death. But the captain, the other officers, the common seamen, they were there, lingering mournful on the ship. But what linked them to all the other ghosts I could not guess.

  ‘Not then. But knowing what I know now, I can reason differently. They were, all these spectres, the spirits of the people who had died so that Dow Amber could live, so that he could move along the path that Fate had dictated for him. Ship Kings, New Islanders, Twin Islanders, it didn’t matter; they were all of them caught up in Dow Amber’s web, just as surely as the Revenge had been entangled by the Fish. Just as I had been entangled. The spectres were the same as me – except that I lived still, while they were all dead.

  ‘So yes, I saw ghosts, there on the Revenge. They were as real as you and me. But if you’re asking me whether ghosts are real anywhere else, if ghosts can walk the earth here in the everyday world … well, that’s another matter.’ The old man stared into his tea. ‘In truth, I don’t think they can. I think the ghosts I saw were unique to that single place and time. There was a web of fate woven about Dow Amber, and I think that web was so fiendishly twisted, wound so perversely tight upon itself, that it somehow squeezed the ghosts I saw from the very fabric of reality, a fabric that otherwise does not allow such things. Those people had been sacrificed to a purpose they knew nothing about, and the unbalance of that, the injustice of that, wrung their spirits from the aether like water from a squeezed sponge. They were allowed to come back from the dead, and to wait on that ship, month by month, year by year, decade by decade, because they were owed a reckoning … and they go it too, eventually.’

  ‘But …’ Lucy stammered. ‘But how could you stand it? How could you live on that ship, with all those ghosts everywhere?’

  Rolly Fish straightened, stretched his back. ‘Oh, I learned to block them out in time. They were always there, of course, and I could see them if I wanted to
– but mostly I did not want to see them, and there was a trick of the mind, or a discipline of the mind, that allowed me to get about day by day without being confronted by their presence. It’s a pity that poor Pietru never learned the same trick, he would not have been so unhappy in his dying days. Not that I was any help to him. If I’d listened to him, really listened, and tried to help him to cope with the ghosts, he need not have died at all.’

  Yes, Lucy had to remind herself. Yes, this man, or the boy he had been, was certainly no hero. He had treated Pietru terribly.

  ‘So what happened next?’ she demanded.

  Rolly Fish gave her a short stare, and said severely, ‘Next, I lived alone on that ship for the following fifty years.’

  Lucy lowered her eyes, abashed. Fifty years, all alone … yes, she had known that this was his claim, even before she came here, but it was unimaginable to her still. ‘And you … didn’t grow old?’

  The severity faded once more. ‘No, I did not age a day in all that time. The Fish sustained me, just as I was when I first communed with it, the same as it had sustained Pietru. I was thirty years old when I first joined with the monster, and thirty years old I stayed, decade after decade after decade. But when I say sustained, I only mean physically. My mind was another matter.’

  ‘Your mind?’

  ‘I went mad, is what I mean. Oh, I was already mad anyway, before Pietru died, but it got much worse after that. The human mind is simply not meant to cope with such isolation for so long. So be warned. You must accept that many of my memories from those times are … unreliable. I can’t swear to how much of it was real anymore, especially the things I saw towards the end. But I never lost track of the time. I was careful about that, it was the only solid fact I had to cling to amid all the delusions. When I say fifty years, it truly was as long as that.’

  ‘But what did you do all that time?’

  The old man’s stare had gone distant once more. ‘The crucial thing I did not do was kill myself. Oh, I had Pietru’s example. I knew that at any time I could stop communing with the Fish, and I would begin to age again. I would grow old and die. Or, to hasten things, I could have starved myself to death. Also, I still had my pistol with its single shot. I didn’t have to spend another day on that awful ship if I didn’t want to. I always had that final escape. But year after year, decade after decade, I did not take it. I think what stopped me the most was the realisation that, if I died, then all that I had suffered so far would be for nothing. It would be forgotten, remembered by no one. And dammit, I wanted my pain to mean something. I wanted my reckoning, just as the ghosts did: with Dow Amber or with fate or with whoever. So I lived. On and on.