Other than a few lumps of charcoal and some small holes in the ground, the Hurons had disappeared from the campsite without leaving a trace. The loss of their local knowledge, hired hands, and more specifically their canoes had the boys in deep discussion of how to achieve Sandover’s ambitions. As the ever-silent Cesar and Patrice led their pair of underlings into the forest to gather supplies, Gordo explained to Cary and Jaime how to build a raft.
By dint of his strength and blunt ignorance of all things waterborne, Cary was sent to help drag the dozen or so stout felled tree from the forest to the shore. Here they barked the logs, for the pine trunks were sappy and had picked up every bit of leaf and grime along the way. Each tree was cleaned and shorn of any protruding branches, then with the adze one side was planed to a relatively level surface. Gordo led them in roping the trunks together, not on shore but in the knee deep water off the shingle.
Slowly the rough platform took shape, and by mid-afternoon he called a rest. Groaning, the others slogged up the shingle to dry land. Jaime remained in the water a little longer, walking around the raft, touching it here and there, as though he could test its seaworthiness with his hands.
“Cary…” He waded out of the water, his bare feet pink from the chill. “Can I speak to you?”
“You’re speaking to me right now.”
“I meant properly. I haven’t been fair to you, I don’t think.”
“How so?”
“I’ve been telling myself you’re part of the problem, but you’ve no more say in this than I do.”
“Nor do any of us.”
Even Sandover, attached to the duke’s man like a whipped dog, bowing and grinning in his presence, ever on alert in his absence. Still nameless, rarely speaking, the eerie man haunted the campground like a wraith, silently appearing from behind a tree or tent when one didn’t expect it, his black glasses like the polished eyes of an insect, unblinking and void of humanity.
“Anyway, that’s what I wanted to say,” Jaime went on. “I’m sorry that I’ve been so prickly towards you. Whatever debt you owe this duke—”
“There’s no debt. I’m here to get back what’s mine.”
“So it’s blackmail.”
“I can’t say more.”
“I understand.” He was about to speak again but closed his mouth, his face hardening as he caught sight of something behind Cary.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” The duke’s man, the wraith, his black eyes boring into the back of Cary’s neck like twin needles.
“Do you think there are even eyes behind those—” Jaime broke off again, gripping his forehead in anguish. “Lord help me, why did I let myself think that?”
Cary clasped Jaime’s slim shoulder, bony from days of trail rations. “Don’t let him in your mind. You’ve got bigger worries than some spook who never talks and doesn’t do a thing.”
“That’s what worries me the most.”
That evening Jaime was more withdrawn than usual, his head lowered whenever he wasn’t watching Cary across the fire. He stirred when Cary did, however, and followed him to the tent, where he crawled into the envelope of blankets without griping about Cary’s size or smell or intelligence.
“Jaime…”
“Hmm…”
“I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“For being no better. For turning so cold on you. You’re…you’re my last friend on Earth. I don’t want to muck that up.”
“Me neither.”
In the dark he felt rather than saw Jaime roll towards him. Pressed against Cary’s shoulder, he spoke in a breathy whisper close to his ear. “You understand this is our last chance to get free. We’ll never have another.”
“Where would we go?” he mumbled in reply, barely moving his lips.
“Anywhere. We’ve that tinderbox of Strike’s so we won’t want for light or warmth. I can smell cook-fires for miles. We’ll find a band of natives or some trading company men and beg for help. Someone will listen.”
He was strongly tempted to agree. He longed to stop living this way, being held hostage by Sandover, a man he wouldn’t piss on to save his life if he caught fire. What if the duke had lied? What if there was no link, and the stolen barks in the duke’s treasure house weren’t his kin’s embodied dreamings but a mere glimpse of their truth, as a Catholic’s bible was to the received word of God. Was he brave enough to find out the hard way, by breaking his oath to that foul man, betraying his orders, and heading into the unknown?
All was unknown, all was peril. He’d gotten used to not being afraid. To feeling invulnerable, protected by his strength, his hardness. To never wondering if what he did was right or wrong. All of that was gone, replaced by this bitter bemusement, a sense that he was buggered to hell no matter what he did.
“Jaime,” he whispered.”
“Hmm…”
“What he wants is impossible, right?”
“Of course.”
“So maybe if you just went down once and had a look, found out for certain—”
Jaime stiffened, his breath hitching. “What if I refuse? Will you force it on me?”
“It’s not for my sake.”
“Then who’s? Please tell me.”
Still Cary hesitated, but what did he gain from keeping this secret? Why divide himself from Jaime now, when the man had reached past his fears and offered the olive branch? “A couple years back, I found work as a guide. I was trying to get free of my rotten life, so I went outback, back to my country, where I’d been born. Some white men offered me what seemed like a fortune to take them round some special places. Sacred places where I knew I shouldn’t take them, but I was tired of starving. They stole from my kin, and when I came after them, they did the same to me as I did to you. I woke up on a ship bound for England.”
“These men worked for the duke?”
“They did.”
“What did they steal?”
“Our dreams.”
“Can such a thing be stolen?”
“There are ways. The Deathless Duke is like no other man. Knows things no one should know.” How to strip a man’s soul from his body, how to tear apart time, end the world. Condemn him and all his ancestors to wander through the dreamless dark, no songs to guide them, no light to find.
Jaime was silent for so long Cary was sure he had fallen asleep, until he rolled towards Cary again. “I’ll go down. I don’t know what I’ll find but…”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
“I know.”
The next morning they towed the raft off the shingle and out into the lake. Cary felt the moment when they passed beyond the shelf of rock that held up the island and entered deep water, as the solidity gave way to the unknown. Looking back, the land seemed very far away, the raft pitifully small. It dipped alarmingly under his weight as he scrambled aboard.
He crawled to the centre where he crouched, unable to rise to his feet, unable to raise his head, for there was nothing to see but water. No land, no safety, no hope. He’d spent his strength dragging these logs to the shore, yet the raft was as a leaf in a hurricane against the enormity of the lake. Jaime crouched before him.
“You can’t swim, can you?” he asked in the hushed murmur he used when Sandover was near. Cary shook his head, speech beyond him, this sense of heart-crushing dread surpassing the dislocation he had felt crossing the ocean. Closing his eyes, Jaime laid his hand over Cary’s. A soft warmth began to spread up Cary’s arm, anchoring him to Jaime, to the firm cradle of the trees who had given their lives to bear theirs up. Deeper, through the water to the stone floor of the lake and into the heart of the earth.
Jaime opened his eyes. “Did that work?”
“Suppose so. Don’t feel so much like I’m going to upchuck over the side.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
He left Cary to absorb the warmth, let it filter through him, calm his fears. They would survive this reckless venture, together. They were stronger together.