Mark Chadbourn - The Devil's Looking-Glass

‘Keep an eye on that one,’ Courtenay rumbled as if he could hear Will’s thoughts. ‘He’s still got too much of the spoiled child in him. If his temper gets the best of him again, you might find that steel going right through ye.’

Will shrugged, feeling the weight of his responsibility to Grace. ‘We will shape him to be a man, one way or another.’

Bloody Jack grunted dismissively.

A warning call rang out from the topman and Courtenay and Will stepped out on deck to find the men leaning over the starboard side, pointing, brows furrowed. The captain barged his way among them, making a space for Will. For a moment, shock lit Will’s features. The ocean had turned brown as far as the eye could see, and the air was thick with a stink like wet dogs. Peering closer, he saw that the Tempest now sailed through a dense bank of seaweed, the glistening tendrils tugging at the galleon’s hull.

‘Avast,’ Courtenay bawled to his men. Once the sailors had trudged away from the rail, the captain leaned in to Will and whispered, ‘I told ye: right where we shouldn’t be.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE SEA OF stinking brown weed seemed to stretch to the blue horizon. The Tempest sailed through the boiling heat as if she were ploughing a furrow in an autumn field. The seamen lined the rails, watching with uneasy eyes while they recalled all the fearful tales of that place they had heard in quayside inns across Europe.

Leaning out, Will glimpsed dark shapes weaving sinuously among the floating clumps of seaweed; eels, he thought. He glanced around for the land he presumed must be near.

Bloody Jack shook his head. ‘No land here,’ he said. ‘Not for days. This is the great Sargasso, a sea within a sea. All around, the currents are the strongest you will ever encounter, but here ships drift in this forest of weed, and grow becalmed. It is a strange place, sailors tell, haunted, and most give it a wide berth.’

‘The weed will not hold us fast?’

‘The wind, or lack of it, is the greater problem. The weed can snarl a rudder, at worst. It floats on the surface in vast mats. I have fathomed it meself here, and there is no bottom. A Spanish sea-dog told me how his vessel was becalmed for weeks in the middle of this stinking sea. To conserve their water, the crew were forced to throw the war horses o’erboard and feared they would not get out with their own lives. There is nowhere like it in all the oceans.’ His brow furrowed. ‘And yet . . . My mind plays tricks with me. The last time I skirted the Sargasso the weed looked different . . .’ His voice tailed off. ‘It remains a mystery to me how that storm blew us so far off course.’

Will heard a troubled note in the captain’s voice, but his attention was caught by the swimming shapes. One broke the surface, black skin glistening in the sun. As thick as a man’s arm, the eel seemed to have a face akin to a baby’s, with wide eyes and full lips that revealed a hint of sharp teeth. A strange mewling sound rose up, cut short as the thing darted back below the surface.

Courtenay recoiled. ‘God ha’ mercy,’ he hissed under his breath.

Will thought back to the white men-fish that swam beneath the surface of the frozen Thames and asked, ‘You have seen the like of that before?’

‘Never. Nor have I heard word of such.’ He crossed himself. ‘I do not believe this is the Sargasso at all. It is some devil-haunted place we have sailed into.’

The sun beat down; the breeze began to fail. An uneasy mood descended on the men as the Tempest drifted through the reeking seaweed. Eyes flickered up to the sagging sails, watching for the moment when the breeze finally died and the galleon would be stranded there. The sea-hardened crew pretended not to notice those mewling noises rolling across the gently lapping swell. And with each hour that passed the weight of apprehension grew until every man was suffused with a deep dread of what lay ahead.

When the sun was at its highest point, the lookout called. Three dark smudges emerged from the heat haze over the seaweed ahead. Shielding his eyes against the glare, Will saw that they were barques. As the Tempest neared, he realized that there was no movement aboard. Two were little more than rotting hulks, listing low in the water, the sails but tatters. He did not recognize their design, but the crudity of the build suggested great age. Courtenay tugged at his beard, his brow creased.

The third ship sported a Spanish flag, hanging limply from the mainmast. Brown weed swelled up its hull. ‘I would investigate that barque,’ Will said, pointing.

Bloody Jack sighed. ‘I had a feeling you were going to say that, Master Swyfte.’

All eyes remained down when the captain asked for volunteers to board the Spanish vessel. Roaring in anger, he chose three men at random and they shuffled off to lower the rowing boat. As Will prepared to climb down the rope ladder to where the vessel bobbed, Strangewayes stepped up. A bruise bloomed on the side of his forehead. ‘I would accompany you,’ he muttered, his expression sullen. After a moment’s consideration, Will consented with a nod.

The seamen sculled away from the Tempest with hesitant strokes, their unsettled eyes darting around the waves of brown vegetation. Will sat at the prow, studying the path ahead. The weed bundled up ahead of the boat, the choking stink of it even thicker now they were surrounded by it. One of the sailors, a pockmarked, pink-faced man, cried out as one of the eel creatures leapt out of the water, disturbed by the oars. Its jaws snapped and its eyes swivelled towards them as if it knew what it was seeing. The men muttered prayers, rowing faster, but that only disturbed the creatures more. The sea on either side churned as they leapt up, mewling and crying in tones that were unsettlingly human.

‘Fish, nothing more,’ Will called out in a reassuring voice, keeping his eyes fixed on the Spanish ship ahead. ‘Only fish.’ The seamen continued to mutter. Strangewayes withdrew his hands from the sides of the boat and clasped them between his thighs.

In the sticky heat, they pulled alongside the larger vessel and one of the seamen hurled a grapnel over the rail. One after the other, they climbed. The ship was still, the only sounds the whispers of the hull. Will wrinkled his nose. An odd smell hung across the stained deck, like a butcher’s shop on a summer noon. ‘Search below,’ he said to the three men, who looked as if he had ordered them to leap into the sea. ‘Call out if you find anything of note.’ He beckoned to Strangewayes, and strode to the captain’s cabin, his hand resting on his rapier’s hilt.

The cabin was no cooler. He sucked in a mouthful of stale air, casting an eye over the berth and the chart-covered trestle. By the compass a half-eaten biscuit lay in its crumbs next to a cup of wine. Strangewayes prowled around the trestle, eyeing the food as if it would bite him. ‘The captain left in a hurry,’ he said.

‘Abandoned his own ship?’

‘Taken, then. By pirates.’

‘Perhaps.’ Will looked round, seeing no signs of a struggle. Dropping to his knees, he traced his fingers across the dusty boards, but found no bloodstains. He flicked open a chest under the broad window to reveal the gleam of gold plate, cups and coin.

‘I do not like it here,’ Strangewayes said, looking round the hot, gloomy cabin. ‘It feels haunted.’

At the trestle, Will pushed a quill and ink-pot aside and opened the captain’s leather-bound journal. He ran one finger under the florid scrawl, silently translating the Spanish entries. ‘He speaks here of an isle of devils, and hearing the tormented cries of lost souls in the night.’ He skimmed the pages and read on. ‘A city of gold. Manoa, he calls it. “No man may escape it, save that he traverses the labyrinth before the Moon-Tower.”’