There are moments to be still and moments to act and those who can tell which is which are the ones who survive. The woman’s words repeated in Elizabeth’s head: I watch for the Pleiades. They were the words Agent Sorren had told her to listen for, by which she would know her contact. I watch for the Pole Star, she was supposed to reply.
Instead she dipped her spoon and took another mouthful of the fish stew. “It’s good,” she said. “But the pepper makes me sweat.”
“I made it specially for you.”
“You are very kind.”
“It’s really nothing.”
The woman held her gaze.
“Do you ever get tired of eating fish,” Elizabeth asked, concealing her turmoil with another spoonful of the stew.
“Sometimes,” the woman said. She still seemed to be waiting for Elizabeth to make the coded response. But why hadn’t the woman spoken the night before? They’d been sitting alone together. They’d even mentioned the stars. It would have been the natural moment to make contact.
Elizabeth looked up into the night sky.
“Do you have something to say to me?” the woman asked.
The answer came to Elizabeth all in a rush. The horror of the Test had been a piece of theatre. And the audience had been herself. Its entire purpose was for her to see herself fail utterly and be condemned. For all its spectacle and costume, it had been merely a preamble to this moment; sitting in the stockade under the cold stars and being tempted to reveal herself as a spy of the International Patent Office.
“I think you should go,” Elizabeth said, holding out the empty bowl and cup.
The woman leaned close. “I can help you.”
Elizabeth’s certainty increased. “I’m beyond help.”
In the same move as taking the bowl and cup, the woman placed a key in Elizabeth’s hand. “Save yourself,” she whispered.
They both stood. The woman turned to go. All the Patent Office spies in the Sargassan Nation had been found and killed. And then the last one, a woman, had gone silent. That was what John Farthing had told her.
“I can’t take this,” Elizabeth said, holding out the key.
“But they’ll kill you!” hissed the woman.
If it was theatre they wanted, it was theatre she would give them. “Where would I run?” she asked, her voice louder now. “If I can’t find freedom here, I’ll find it nowhere. Let them kill me. I’m done with this world.” So saying, she placed the key in the woman’s hand and turned away.
Two guards came for her at dawn and marched her back towards the main deckway. Lamps shone from some of the wealthier houses in the centre of Freedom Island. But there were few people about to stare as they passed and no one followed.
More guards were waiting on the ship’s deck. But instead of leading her down to the throne room they stood to attention, waiting for something, Elizabeth thought.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
No one answered. Their mouths were set level and stern. But the eyes that looked on her seemed to be smiling. There would be no execution. A more subtle game was at play.
She turned and saw two more guards climbing the steps from the deckway. Fidelia walked between them, her face white with terror. The same charade was being played out for her. Instinctively, Elizabeth held out her hand. Fidelia took it.
“Don’t worry,” Elizabeth whispered as they came together in an embrace. “This isn’t what it seems.”
“It’s time,” said one of the guards.
Elizabeth could feel Fidelia’s tension through the clammy grip of her hand as they stepped together towards the hatchway.
There was no executioner waiting in the throne room, nor any guards. The queen of the Sargassans sat on her throne. On her right hand side sat Gwynedd, the woman who looked so like Siân. Elizabeth scanned the shadows around the walls. This time there were no masked figures.
“Come closer,” said the queen. Furs wrapped her, as they had done the previous day, but this time she smiled. “You, child.” The queen gestured to Fidelia. “Come sit here.”
Fidelia obeyed, climbing the steps to just below the throne. “Am I not to be killed?”
The queen placed a hand on Fidelia’s head. “You are to become one of us. But what will you become? What, exactly? Today we decide.”
Confusion and relief played over Fidelia’s face. Then amazement. She looked directly at Elizabeth, her expression questioning.
“What was your work before you came to us?”
Fidelia swallowed before answering. “Steward,” she said, her voice breathy, as if she’d yet to recover from her terror.
“We have no need for stewards. What else might you do?”
“I can… pilot a boat.”
“Can you fight?”
“I could learn.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could. You were steward to the commodore, they tell me.”
“I… That is… yes.”
“You must have overheard many things.” The queen’s gnarled hand began stroking Fidelia’s hair. “How many ships does the Company have?”
“I… don’t know.”
It was a subtle interrogation; the most subtle that Elizabeth had ever witnessed. She had no doubt that the queen would have picked up on Fidelia’s hesitation.
“How is it you don’t know, child?”
“The ships came and went from month to month,” Fidelia said, more certain now. “But I’d say there were always more than twenty-five. And less than forty.”
It was a clever answer. A wide enough range to not betray her grandfather, the commodore. Yet narrow enough to seem believable ignorance.
“Among those ships, how many were made for war?”
“I’ve seen five with my own eyes,” Fidelia said.
There was art in this evasion. Elizabeth remembered how the same quickness of mind had been used on her when she first went to the mother ship. Yet these were most likely questions the Sargassans had the answers to already. With underwater ships, they could have been in among the fleet for years and no one would have been any the wiser.
The queen continued to stroke Fidelia’s hair. “What did you think to our Test, my dear?”
“I was frightened.”
“Everyone is frightened. That is its purpose.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It is a test of doing, not saying.”
“But I failed it. You said I’d be killed, or I wouldn’t have run away.”
“You ran and we watched. Those who run are of two types. We call them the gazelle and the lion. Both are creatures of action. The Test was to tell which creature you are.”
“But what was the Test?”
“There was a boat. You could have taken it.”
“A child was asleep in it.”
“There was a pistol. You checked that it was loaded. We watched you through every step. There was a knife. You didn’t take it. You picked it up. Then you put it down again. You ran but you didn’t try to kill. By this, we know your nature. You are a gazelle.”
“Then did I pass or fail?”
“It is a different kind of test. No one fails – but for a very few. By your action I know to make you a sailor but not a warrior. We’ll have use for you, Fidelia. Good use in the time to come.”
Fidelia’s eyes were cast down. “Thank you,” she said, though the words seemed to be difficult for her to form. Few find comfort in admiring their own enemy.
“Come here, child.”
This time it was Elizabeth’s turn. She climbed the dais to sit on the floor next to the throne, turned so she could look up at the queen. Mother Rebecca’s hand rested on her head and began to stroke. Elizabeth understood well enough what was happening. Having pierced the illusion of her first visit to the throne room, she knew another piece of theatre was in play. But it is one thing to recognise a drama, another to stay free of its grip. She dug a fingernail into her palm, banishing the pang of affection for her lost mother.
“Some who take the Test will run,” Rebecca said. “These are the brave ones. The courageous. Women of action. But when offered the key, some won’t take it. Or in taking it, they won’t dare unlock the door. We call these the sheep and the dogs. The sheep are those women made meek by fear. They too will take their place in the Nation. They will become fishers and tailors, cooks and cleaners. The dogs are those women who do not run because their instinct is faithfulness to the rule, even though it seems a tyranny. The dogs will become scribes and messengers, assayers and negotiators.”
If Julia had been there, sitting at the foot of the throne, Elizabeth had no doubt which quality would have shone through. Every particle of Julia’s being was faithfulness.
“What skills do you bring to us, Elizabeth?”
“I can read and write,” she said, trying to follow the same path her friend would have taken. “I could be a scribe or a messenger.”
“These are fine skills,” said the queen. “Yet not uncommon.”
“I have knowledge of the law as they know it in London and Carlisle.”
“How came you by this knowledge?”
It was a dangerous path, this gentle interrogation. Trying to follow Julia’s steps, trying to speak only truth, so as not to be caught in a lie. Mother Rebecca’s hand smoothed back her hair.
“I was born in a circus,” Elizabeth said. “I would have stayed there, but a cruel man wanted to have me. He took my father to court. Sent him to a debtors’ prison. After I ran away, I taught myself the law from books so I’d never be caught the same way again.”
“Yes, child. Siân told me your story. But do you have skills, aside from books and letters.”
“I can make a disguise.”
“There are many here who’ve passed themselves as men. But I think you have a greater skill that you’re not telling us. What did you think of the Test?”
Elizabeth looked up and found herself caught in Mother Rebecca’s gaze. “I was scared,” she said, borrowing Fidelia’s answer.
“That is its purpose. But do you think it works?”
“I… That is… yes. It’s a clever test.”
“You didn’t run, my dear. So you may be a sheep or a dog. Which is your defining quality? Are you faithful or are you meek?”
“Faithful,” Elizabeth said, without hesitation, trying to match what Julia would have said, but feeling like a small creature being slowly skewered.
“Not meek then, for sure. But the thing that confuses me is this – when you were a girl, you ran away. You crossed from one nation to another. You hid as a man. Or as a woman. Whichever was safer. You survived through action. Yet when you took the Test, you chose to stay, waiting for the executioner. We offered a way out, but you didn’t take it. When you were a child, you were defined by action. What caused such a change in you, Elizabeth?”
No wonder the Sargassans had rooted out every Patent Office spy. The queen may have been old, but she was sharp and her interrogation was subtle. Elizabeth was already being opened up by it.
Gwynedd had been sitting silent all this time. Now she spoke. “You can tell everything to Mother Rebecca. The more you tell her, the more she can help you.”
Elizabeth looked up at the old woman who stroked her hair, resisting the impulse to think of her with affection. Even in the queen’s name there was a subtle force at work.
“You divide people into lions, gazelles, sheep and dogs. But there are more than four types.”
“Then choose an animal for yourself,” said the queen.
“Perhaps I’m a fox.”
“What are the qualities of the fox?”
“It’s the animal that knows it’s being watched,” said Elizabeth. “It thinks and it waits.”
“What would a fox do if we gave her the Test?”
“She’d know she was being tested. She’d understand that the key was a trick. She’d refuse to take it. And she’d say so in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.”
“But this is a rare type,” said Mother Rebecca. “We call her the crow – the animal that watches its watcher. How did you know you were being tested?”
“I didn’t. At first. It was the Test of Casks that gave you away. Once I’d figured that for a fool’s choice, I thought back and saw that all the questions had been the same. Any answer I gave could be argued as wrong.”
“Then you are a crow indeed, my child.”
“Are there jobs for crows on Freedom Island?”
Mother Rebecca put a finger under Elizabeth’s chin and lifted her face. “Crows are dangerous. It’s difficult to choose their fate. Their words and actions may not match their thoughts. The farmer kills the crow to protect the other animals. Tell me this, child, why should I not kill you?”
“Because you’re not a farmer,” said Elizabeth. “I think you’re a crow as well. You’re the queen of all crows.”