The Cargo from Neira by Alys Clare

Author:Alys Clare [Clare, Alys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-20T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

That night I dreamt I was back at sea. I was on a ship very like the Falco, and we were running fast under full sail. Now and again stretches of rocky shore appeared to starboard, materialising out of the mist and then melting back into invisibility; my dream self did not question why the strong wind did not blow away the mist. I was in my surgeon’s cabin, trying to sew a pair of breeches together because one leg had become detached, and Theo was yelling at me to hurry up because the Queen was waiting at Greenwich and wanted to give me a ruby. Then, in the way of dreams, instantly I was up on deck, the wild sea roiling and foaming as the Falco’s prow carved through the huge waves, the ship responding in that devilish dance of hers that threw her crew and everything else not fastened down against bulkheads, down companionways and sometimes even over the side. I had my hands on the rail and I knew I was secure, my body instinctively moving with the Falco and not against her. I yelled aloud with the joy of it, and Captain Zeke gave me a mug of brandy and shouted right in my ear, ‘Greenwich! Look!’ and then I saw he was pointing not at the south shore of the Thames but at an enormous wave that was rising up straight ahead and, even as I stared at it in horror, manifesting itself into a vast sea dragon.

I woke up.

Moonlight penetrated my chamber, and it was very cold. I was still half in my dream, and the sea dragon was as vivid in that moment as the quiet domestic details of the room.

Three things occurred to me.

The first was that I hadn’t been terrified by the storm or the sea dragon; on the contrary, I’d revelled in the danger and the sheer strangeness.

The second was that I understood just how much I grieved for the life at sea that I had lost.

The third was that I’d stood there on that violently bucking deck, the Falco beneath me unable to decide whether to pitch or to toss and maliciously deciding to do both, the horizon all but invisible through the sea spray, the rain and the mist, and I had felt wonderful. Not nauseous, not vertiginous; in fact, not the slightest suggestion of sickness.

It was only a dream, I told myself.

I had dreamed what I wanted to be the truth: that I could go to sea again and not suffer the terrible effects brought about by that head injury; that damaging, devastating blow that came about when a careless sailor let a rope slip so that a heavy wooden crate crashed into my head, just behind my right ear. My last experience of a sea voyage had been the nightmare of the homeward journey across the Atlantic, throwing up constantly and violently, my guts heaving out from my empty belly trickles of yellow bile that burned as it came up.

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