I didn’t stop; I accelerated, and turned with tyres squealing right onto the wharf itself. The high dark hulls loomed over me; in the last warm daylight they seemed less daunting, less monolithic, lined and decorated with bright paintwork, and even delicate traceries of gilt. Mellow brasswork gleamed along the rails, and round the portholes in some of the sleeker, more modern-looking craft. But there was little sign of life aboard them, save a few figures in the rigging or leaning over the rails; a gaggle of men were unloading one of them, swinging bales ashore in a net dangling from the end of a boom, something I’d never seen outside a nineteenth century photograph. A horse-drawn dray stood ready to receive them; but both men and horse watched me with incurious stares as I roared past. The wharves seemed to stretch without a break as far as I could see in either direction. But on the brickwork of the central building, in bold Victorian capitals almost bleached and crumbled away by a century or more of sun and salt air – FISHER’S WHARF. And below it, even less visible, arrows pointing to left and right, and beneath them long lists of names.
Stockholm
Trinity
Melrose
Danziger
Tyre …
I didn’t stop to read the rest. It was the way I was heading. I stamped on the accelerator and surged away, bouncing and rattling across the rough stones. Four wharves down, past warehouses that rose as high and ancient as any castle walls, and as mysterious; strange savours mingled in the wind, among the stink of tar and hides and stale oils. And at last, on a wall ahead, I saw, in Gothic script, the faded legend Danziger Wharf and swung the car around to a screeching stop. I jumped out, ran a few steps … and stopped.
There, for the first time in all that great phalanx of ships, there was a breach. Three berths held tall ships like all the rest; but the fourth berth stood empty, and through the gap the harbour waters rippled golden with the sunset light. From the capstans and the iron bollards at the quayside short lengths of heavy rope lay strewn like so many dead snakes across the wharf, or dangling down over the edge. I ran forward, stooped to one and saw that its end was clean, unfrayed. In deep despair I sank down, staring at the empty waters. I’d made good time; but the Wolves, in their own strange way, had been faster. They’d cut their cables, and were gone. And Clare with them …
But how long ago? It couldn’t be more than a few minutes, half an hour at most. It took time to get those huge sailing ships stirring. Surely they’d still be in sight! I sprang up.
But then, slowly, I sank again to my knees on the rough stones. It was almost an attitude of worship. I was beyond doubting my sanity any longer. I was ready for great wonders – so I thought. But nothing I had ever imagined could prepare me for the sight I saw then.
Ahead of me the harbour walls opened onto the borderless expanses of the sea, grey and forbidding as the gathering mantle of clouds above, save where the last light of sunset burned a great slashing gap. And in that gap the thin tongues of cloud, tinged with glowing fire, formed an image of radiant sunlit slopes, edged with gold, bordering a stretch of misty azure. I knew the pattern of those slopes, I remembered them all too well, though I saw them now from yet another angle. It was the archipelago among the clouds, the same as I had seen before, opening now before me above the empty sea. And down the heart of that stretch of azure, wide and blue and glittering as an estuary studded with islands, bordered with broad golden sands, I saw the high ornate stern of a great ship, its sails outspread like wings, beating up and away into the fathomless depths of the sky.
Chapter Five
As long as that glorious blaze of light lasted I knelt there, dumbstruck, dazzled in eye and mind, buffeted and shaken by cold gusts. Small waves lapped at the wharf, the tall ships rocked gently at their moorings with soft slow creaks and groans, like a wind-driven wood. I felt like the least leaf in it, dry and light, quivering before that autumnal wind. Only when the clouds closed like a gate above the horizon and shut the colour out of the world did it slacken and die; and I came to myself, miserable, shaken, cold, and clambered stiffly to my feet.
Dreams. Hallucinations. Delusions. Schizophrenia –
I tumbled those wretched little weasel-words over and over in my mind, and more and more they felt like sheer presumption, blind hubris. As if I thought all infinity could be encompassed in my own little brain. As if I’d glimpsed a great cathedral dome, and claimed it was the roof of my own skull. Accept what I’d seen? No question of that. A tidal wave – accept or reject it all you like, the sea rolls over you just the same and teaches you an invaluable lesson, not to overestimate your importance in the whole order of things. Not believing – that would have been the hard thing. That would have taken a lot of imagination. That could really drive a man mad.
Only last night I had been given a glimpse of infinity; but now I’d balanced upon the world’s edge, and stared out into its abyss. Those depths had tugged at me, drawn me like the emptiness beyond a cliff, but a thousand times more strongly. They’d sucked my thoughts out into hazy distances, and even now, when the vision was withdrawn, it was mortally hard to force them back. Against that vast backdrop myself or any human being seemed vanishingly small, and our concerns insignificant, passing things, bubbles in an immense unending waterfall.
And yet we must matter, if only to each other, if only to give each other that fraction more of meaning, that slight extra significance. What more could bubbles do, than cling?
I had to help Clare. I didn’t want to think why any more. But into this world beyond the Danube, this borderless wilderness, I couldn’t venture on my own, not far. The twilight had turned grey, and in the still air the cold sea-haze clung clammily about me; along the wharves dim yellow eyes of light were winking on. A chilly drop of rain splashed against my brow. Wearily I climbed into the car, slammed the door, twisted the key in the ignition, and turned away back along the wharves, looking for a way back out into that maze of side-roads. I had to find something first; and it might be the hardest.
But either luck was with me, for once; or I was beginning to find my way about. The rain was growing heavier, and I’d already passed by the mouths of two streets that seemed somehow too dim and unpromising under their mantle of drizzle. The third looked no different, but as I passed across its mouth a distant gleam caught my eye, a tiny spot of colour piercing the rain-curtain for an instant. I braked, swung the car bumping and bouncing across the rough wharf, into the mouth of the street. There it was still, distant, tiny, a ruby among folds of grey velvet. My feelings told me nothing, one way or another; but I’d no better sign to follow. Down the street it led me, only a little way, to pull in beneath the windows of a grim-looking building. Once, perhaps, it had been a company’s offices, a commercial fortress that ruled the fates of men from here to Norway or Vladivostock. Now a modern signboard, peeling and unreadable, obscured the carved door lintel, while most of those windows were blanked off with what looked like tarpaper behind the glass. It turned them into dark mirrors; and the image that stood in one was the mouth of the lane opposite, and the light that shone at its end. I sprang out and stood blinking, peering through the rain as it bounced and splashed over the car roof; then I slammed the door behind me, and began to run. It was the signboard of the Illyrian Tavern.