East-southeast that course led us, towards the Dry Tortugas and from there southeast again, between Great Bahama Bank and the haunted Havanaise coast to Windward Passage. In all that time we sighted few other sails, and none were black; nor, when we hailed them, had they sighted any. It didn’t take us long to guess the Wolves were taking an eccentric course to avoid us – flattering, after a fashion. But it left Le Stryge as our main hope, and nobody liked that. He kept to his cabin, from which strange sounds and even stranger odours seeped, and emerged from time to time only to confirm that our quarry was ahead of us somewhere on more or less this bearing. Each time he seemed greyer and more exhausted. ‘They grow harder to follow,’ he growled, more than once. ‘Something new reaches out to them, something that seeks to shield them from my sight. But it is not strong enough. Not yet.’
Meanwhile Mall systematically beat me black and blue. Did I land any back? Don’t ask. At the end of a long day’s swordplay I felt almost too stiff to walk. Not that I was complaining. If she was taking the time to give me a crash course in staying alive it was because she was afraid I’d need it. And I knew how lucky I was to have such a exciting hellion of a teacher, able to make the air crackle yet never forgetting what it was like to be an awkward beginner. I remembered reading once that was a mark of true greatness in almost any field. When in our third day’s lessons she suddenly started leaving delicate slices like paper cuts, that itched rather than hurt – at least till the sweat got at them – I began to feel like some kind of fighting man.
Also like some kind of masochist. But at least she knew where to stop. Just.
One bright noon – it might have been the fourth – the mastheads hailed their warnings, and we dropped everything and ran to the railings. But it was not black sails that lifted above the horizon. It was the jagged green fangs of a mountainous island, and for us they were emblems of failure. If Hispaniola was in sight, the chances were that we’d missed our foes, and that they were already there.
‘And Clare –’ I couldn’t finish.
Jyp shook his head. ‘Easy, man. Whatever they mean with her, it’s some kind of … of ritual; and they have their appointed places and times, all. Chances are it’s not yet, they could hardly time their arrival so close – not after their little brush with us. And if they hadn’t harmed her already, chances are they won’t till then.’
‘If the whole bloody business hasn’t frightened her out of her mind already!’
‘I doubt that,’ said Mall, draping an amiable arm about my shoulder. ‘We’re harder than you’d gauge us, Stephen, our sex. She’ll think herself snared in a nightmare, sure; but she’s had a glimpse of hope. Not to lose heart, and fulfil it – that’s your part. Play it to the hilts!’
On the last long tack south into Port-au-Prince the atmosphere aboard was electric. An unpleasant surprise could very well be waiting. Soon after sunrise we came sweeping into the mountain-ringed bay under full sail, guns primed and crews crouched ready behind closed ports, eyeing with deep suspicion every little isle and inlet big enough to mask a ship. But as the island’s main port rose – or rather sprawled – ahead of us at bay’s end, it was immediately obvious that no ship remotely large enough to be our Wolfish quarry was docked there.
In a spirit of glum anticlimax we brought the Defiance alongside a rickety wooden dock by a decrepit timber yard at the far end of the town. Le Stryge, complaining bitterly of exhaustion, was cajoled into trying his divination again. Meanwhile we sent parties ashore to poke about discreetly after any news. After the last little incident I, of course, wasn’t allowed to go. They left me sitting on the rail, nursing my bruises, chewing my nails and glaring out at this city that was supposed to be too dangerous for me.
It didn’t look it. It was nothing like approaching New Orleans up the dark Mississippi, night-bound and mysterious. The air was clear, cool, transparent, the freshening light striking every detail with stinging clarity. Not dangerous, or sinister – lazy, if anything, stretched out like a drowsy slut all across the flat shoreline, straggling back up the forested mountain slopes behind. Even along the seafront patches of untamed trees appeared between walls of white stone and sun – bleached planking, warped and salt – whitened, between elegant old villas in French or Spanish styles and dilapidated docks. In places the trees thinned out into patches of scrubby wasteland where yellowish oxen browsed, shaking their heads at the first flies. On the higher slopes clumps of the same thick greenery mingled randomly among clutches of sun – bleached buildings. Which was encroaching on which, the houses or the jungle? I couldn’t say for sure. The twentieth century hadn’t touched this place. There was no hum of motor traffic to be heard. Belated cockcrows drifted out to us, among the screams of flocking parrots; otherwise it was very quiet nearby. I couldn’t even hear children’s voices, about the most universal sound there is. All I could make out now and again was a constant dull pulsing, and chanting, perhaps, or wailing. It was the only unsettling note in the whole placid scene. Nothing dangerous about it; and yet the longer I watched and listened, the more the feeling grew on me that there was something wrong, something hellishly wrong.
The twentieth century …
Wait a minute. I’d read a lot about Port-au-Prince, hadn’t I? A year or so back, when I’d been briefing one of Barry’s pet clients on Caribbean trade conditions. All that stuff in the Department of Trade reports about how up-to-date the place was compared with most thirds-world capitals. Almost offensively so, given the state the rest of the country was in. Offices, hotels, neoned nightclubs, glaring casinos; docks that could take small cruise liners – where were they? Broad boulevards, tall towers of concrete and glass, a skyline that should have taken the sun like a forest of mirrors – where the hell were they hiding? Not a sign, however carefully I scanned the scene. Once or twice there seemed to be a glassy glitter in the air at the edge of sight. But always when I looked again, shading my eyes, it resolved into a tall white church spire, a row of white thatches on the hill, or just some fleeting trick of the light. There was nothing more.
And these forested hills … The island had a terrible deforestation problem. I’d read that too. It didn’t look like it from here; still less like it from the sea.
For a moment I had the panicky idea that it was some trick of the Wolves, some disguise of the kind they’d used to spirit Clare away. They could even be moored near us now, hidden by it. But Le Stryge would surely have sussed that out.
The true explanation crept over me by slow degrees, like a chill coming on. And with about the same feeling.
Shadows. I was seeing shadows. Shadows in broad daylight, shadows at high noon. Shadows of the city, of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, maybe, or a blend of both; the same shadows that lay behind Canal Street in New Orleans, behind Danube Street back home. Long images of their past, their spirit, cast deep into the timeless world beyond the Core. But these shadows were strong, not images in darkness but stronger than the daylight. The whole island must be haunted by them, not lurking at the edges of the night but right beneath the living day, ready to show through. Strong enough even at high noon to swamp what had taken their place – at least for those who moved in shadows already. Even for those who didn’t, they must be a tangible, almost oppressive presence – a ghost forever at their heels, behind every step they took. Their bright modern world must seem like nothing more than a shimmer of light upon dark waters. From the right angle you could look straight through, into the fathomless deeps below.