Tales from the Grey Void

Clouds like razorblades cut slits in the sky on the day we left Amsterdam in search of the Black Beauty—a cold sunrise, shocking pink, bled its visceral light into the low horizon like gauze staunching an open wound. I could not shake this macabre image from my head, nor could I rid myself of the memory of Jacob Stirling’s departure. He had not awaited the return of the crew, many of whom were still ashore, soaking in the majesty of the sky-docks as they were entitled after such a successful hunt, but instead, stole away under the cover of night, taking with him a few hands counted as loyal to himself. I had awaited Stirling by the gangway—not to debate the merits of Cruikshank’s revenge, but simply to see him off, one friend to another. He had clasped my hand in his and nodded, speaking not a word in parting, a sad look in his eyes, as if he were saying farewell to a terminally ill family member before they embarked upon a dangerous surgery with little chance of success—as though he did not think we would meet again.

That morning, I found both Claude and Hailey in the officer’s mess. Neither had any notion of what had passed the previous day in that same room, nor what was to happen now—they both seemed bright and cheerful, eagerly discussing the next leg of the voyage. I was loathe to dismiss this delightful fantasy and so disillusion them of our captain’s course—they seemed in that moment to be so happy. Claude poured them both coffee from the jug upon the table, brought up from the kitchens moments earlier by Lorenzo Serrano, one of the ship’s cooks, Hailey passed Claude the butter dish and offered to butter his waffles for him. There could be no doubt the pair had struck up a romance aboard the Catuvellauni and there was a charmingly domestic quality about their affections, as if last night had been spent not just in passion but in understanding and communication—they seemed, in effect, to have settled into one another, as sediments might settle together at the bottom of an ocean and, in time, form young stone. I did not want to tell them of Cruikshank’s intentions, yet I had no other choice—I would not entrust the captain with this duty, for I knew there was still a chance he would refuse it; that some part of him, the stronger or the weaker, I did not know, wished to cast off and sail away from Amsterdam before revealing his plans to the crew. I waited until they had finished eating—until, perhaps, the very last opportunity, for the pair were eager to be away from the mess, up on deck to inspect their boats.

To my surprise, when I had finished my explanation, they seemed unperturbed.

“What is the problem, mon frère?” said Claude. “We signed up to follow le capitaine, not our own whims, no?”

“She’s bound to be valuable too, right?” said Hailey. “One of a kind, by the sounds of it. When we plug her, we’ll sell her for a fortune.”

I shook my head and was about to answer when the sound of the pipe ran high and sharp through the gondola, and the voice of Pitt Talbot crackled through the tannoy:

“All hands on deck. All hands and officers on deck. Captain Cruikshank is to address the crew.”

On the quarterdeck we took our places behind the captain, who stood looking out over the main deck where the crew were assembled. The space behind me, left in Stirling’s absence, was promptly filled by Hailey and though my initial impulse had been to wave her back, I quashed the instinct before it took root—it was a weakling impulse, as if part of me believe that, by leaving this gap, Stirling might return before our departure.

“My crew, my crew,” said Cruikshank, his words ringing out in a true, high-altitude voice of the kind used to deliver orders in the midst of a flood. “Where would I be were it not for your endeavours? For your work and for the pleasure of your company on this first leg of our voyage, I thank you.”

The crew, as if sensing the demands of the occasion, cheered as one, knowing perhaps that this address portended more than a mere polite formality. Conversely, I felt the sting of complicity for my part in the charade and redoubled my efforts to comport myself in a manner befitting my station—my face remained stony and mannequin blank as I listened to Cruikshank’s speech.

“More than this, I thank you for your unwavering loyalty,” Cruikshank continued. “You owe me nothing and yet I know you will give me everything I ask of you. It is for this reason that I can entrust you with the most important task of my existence—this first leg and the manner in which you have conducted yourselves has proved to me that you are worthy of it. You have all passed the test.

“It will not be easy. We may well pass into dangerous airs before it is over, but I have faith in each of you—it is not only the task at hand that I entrust to you, but my life.

“We journey north and high into the upper altitudes in search of a particular tub—some of you may know it by its name; Black Beauty.”

At this, a murmur ran through the crew—a divide emerged, though the division seemed to have nothing to do with their enthusiasm. Neighbours turned to one another and, in quick, hushed exchanges, divulged all they knew of this mythical quarry—knowledge passed swiftly and with it, a sort of nervous excitement seemed to infect the assembly.

I do not know what I had expected of these men and women—some trepidation, perhaps. Resistance to Cruikshank’s determination—a response like that of Stirling’s in miniature. This was not the case—within a few seconds of that legendary name being uttered, the crew’s susurrations had died and each now faced their captain intently, with a look of pure joy at the prospect of what was to come.

It was this, I think, that most disturbed me in my naïvety, for it felt as though I were witnessing the scene before me in a dream and not in waking life—my assumptions, of the crew’s devotion to a mercantile philosophy, to the industry of which we were all a part, to the means of their livelihood, were shattered and in their place arose the spectre of romance, shadows of heroism and furtive desires for adventure and glory aired at last.

“Are you with me?” said Cruikshank.

“Aye!” the crew roared in response.

“Then we must seal this pact between us,” said Cruikshank, and from a crate by his feet he withdrew a bottle of whisky. “Come, each of you and receive this libation, this baptism that shall unify us in our purpose.”

One by one, the crew climbed to the quarterdeck and received a mouthful of the honey-coloured spirit until the bottle ran dry and another was opened.

“Now each of you has tasted an ember of my ambition, let that fire fuel you,” Cruikshank cried. “Make haste, make haste and prepare to set sail!”

***

The days passed slow and sluggish, the Catuvellauni weighed down as it was with its great burthen of supplies, brought aboard in anticipation of a second leg which would never materialise. There was little to do besides maintain the vessel and to count and recount the resources in the hold, yet none of the crew seemed bothered by this dearth of excitement—there was no ratcheting up of tensions, nor the grinding out of rivalries as one might expect aboard a vessel that had abandoned its prime directive in favour of personal vendetta. Rather, they seemed energised in their menial tasks, committed wholly to Cruikshank’s revenge, as if the shared libations on the Amsterdam docks had bound them to him, mind, body and soul.

We climbed steadily higher, a few degrees from true, and passed parallel after weary parallel on our journey north, with little more than seabirds to accompany us—for the northern latitudes were believed to have been swept clean of suitable prey several years ago. What guided us, then, was something of a mystery, though it was a mystery the crew seemed blissfully unaware of.

“What is our heading?” I had said to him one evening in the privacy of his quarters.

“I cannot say, Bart,” he had replied.

“But what is guiding us?” I said. “Do we have information about the Black Beauty’s whereabouts?”

Cruikshank shook his head and smiled darkly, tapping his artificial leg with the piece of scrimshaw Pitt had gifted him.

“I feel it,” he said. “In this damned appendage—the beast left something of itself behind when it took my leg, Bart, it left a fragment of itself behind and it is this lodestone that guides us, nothing more, nothing less.”

I had shaken my head and left, for I could not countenance a prolonged argument with the man—I did not blame him for his obsession, nor this arcane mood which now seized him, but I felt trapped—trapped, no less, by my own design. I had not turned away from his path, as Stirling had, it is true, but nor had I thrown myself fully into the vortex of his ambition, as had the other members of the crew—instead, I had lowered my head into the vice of half-hearted capitulation and now, as the chuck tightened around my brow, I wanted to be rid of it, to walk free and away from this dark phantom of a man I had once honoured and respected.

So it was in secret that I began plotting my escape from what was sure to be a doomed venture. Over the coming weeks, I began stockpiling supplies, concealing them in the bottom of the Tasciovanus, writing off the thefts as spoilage and relying on the naïvety of the quartermaster to lend credence to my story. I was not unaccustomed to furtiveness and stealth, though I had hoped I would never again have to resort to such things—they belonged to a past life as distant from my present circumstances as the Catuvellauni was from the exotic hunting grounds of the Australasian continent; a past that seemed like another existence entirely removed from my own, as if I had once been another person. It was this return of long repressed habits that brought on my depression and, while my nocturnal bouts of larceny went unnoticed, the shift in my mood did not.

“Mon ami, you are out of sorts,” Claude said one morning as we sat down to breakfast. “Have you been getting enough sleep?”

It was true, I had not been sleeping well—between my nightly excursions to and from the hold, and my nightmares, I was lucky to get more than an hour or two each night. A widget of octopine, purchased from a reputable dealer on the Amsterdam docks had quelled the hell visions for a time, but I had since run dry and, as I lay in my bunk each evening, I burned with the fever of them.

I shook my head.

“No, Claude, I have not slept well, but this is nothing new to me—do not concern yourself, it will pass.”

“Is it Stirling leaving?” said Hailey. “I know you two were close.”

“It is not,” I said. “It is an old affliction of mine, nothing more.”

I would be lying if I said I had not thought of Stirling since his departure, for the manner of our parting stuck in my mind like a bramble thorn, but he was not the subject of my nightmares—their source lay elsewhere, though where that source lay precisely was not known to me at this time.

In my dreams, I was sculling through a great black ocean, more void than sea, without delineation between sky and water so that it seemed as if I were immersed completely in an infinite volume of black ink. A dreadful silence reigned in that place—for peace is not the absence of sound, but the absence of those sounds which demand our attention—and all around, this eerie nothingness yawned, as if preparing to speak. Each time I dreamt this dream, I would forget what came next—I was returned to a state of naïvety and ignorance, though a certain vestigial tension would remain, for I knew at least that there was something more out there, waiting only for the right trigger to spring into existence. The silence would stretch out upon this tension, as an acrobat might take their first tentative steps upon a high-wire and then, it would snap—out tumbled the monstrous voice of the void; a terrible, gurgling roaring that filled my ears. I would awake, drenched in cold sweat, the sound of the voice ringing through my head—and yet, I never could recall the words it spoke to me, only the timbre and tone, the awful gurgling, as of some watery god laughing.