Beneath Ceaseless Skies #88 Read online

Aspley opened his eyes beneath the water. Powell was next to him, sinking fast, the weight of his Adams dragging him down. His eyes were closed, his body limp. Aspley could see the light of the surface above. He kicked towards it, struggling against the suck of the sea, the overwhelming claustrophobic weight of the water. He shut his eyes, wishing in that moment, of all things, to be sitting at his desk, bathed in the deep humidity of Kalicut as a punkah whooshed overhead, playing with those oh-so-precious paper secrets of the Empire. Yet it all meant nothing, nothing at all, and it wasn’t so much the secrets that he wished for but his wooden chair and desk itself, because it was there he had felt most safe and in complete control of his life. His chest tightened, his lungs swelled with pain. He wanted one more breath, just one more breath was all he asked, and after that perhaps another, but the air above was still so far away...just one more breath...

  * * *

  Apsley spluttered as the air plunged into lungs. He coughed violently, once, twice, expelling seawater in a great gurgling eruption. Then he breathed slowly, steadily, breathed in clean fragrant air. He was surprised to find himself standing steady on his feet, so surprised that he swayed and almost stumbled. His clothes were wet, soaked right through. A pool of seawater gathered at his feet. He could taste the brine in his mouth. Before him there was a set of white marble steps that lead to a raised platform. To his left and right, white marble walls, cut through with glittering gemstones, curved around him.

  He turned slowly, expecting that behind him he would find an entrance, a doorway, his mind searching for explanations. He had been washed ashore on the island, and in a daze, a delirium, had stumbled from the beach and into this building. But there was no entrance behind him. The curved wall continued, smooth and unbroken. His eyes followed it upwards where it rose to perhaps forty or fifty feet above, there to form a domed ceiling, translucent and glowing from the force of the sun that shone through.

  A sudden panic rose to Aspley’s throat. He had no idea where he was or how he had come to be there. No explanations to soothe the rushing of his frantic mind. But then his intellect cut in. Reason, lovely, lovely reason, told him, in all its wisdom, that wherever he was it was preferable to where he had been, preferable, dear god, yes, to the horror of sucking seawater into his lungs.

  Testing his body, Aspley placed his foot on the first step. Then he raised himself onto the second, then the third, counted ten steps to the top of the platform, pleased that his body was obeying and he had not drowned.

  At the top of the steps he gazed across a beautiful blue pool. Among purple lotus flowers, the body of a naked woman floated. Her skin was creamy white, save for the rosy pink of her nipples. Long black hair fanned out in a snaky halo around her head. Her chest rose and fell in a deep sleepy rhythm. She looked so calm, so peaceful, as if she was forever cocooned within sweet and pleasant dreams.

  Aspley sat down at the edge of the pool, trailed his fingers in the cool water. Who are you? What are you doing here? He whispered these questions to himself as he watched her. She was so beautiful, so serene...then he heard the song, the song that he had heard on the boat, the song that he had heard as he stood on his line in the desert. And he knew. This was the woman he had met in the library, who had shown him the book and told him that the future is always unwritten.

  Aspley was filled with a sudden desire to plunge into the pool, to swim to her. The fancy crossed his mind that he was somehow living in a fairytale and that he could awaken her with a kiss. He even had a theory in his head that he wanted to discuss with her. The future was unwritten, how right she was. But, what if you had all the information you needed about everything that was happening, and you knew from past events that the patterns of history and of human lives unfold in certain ways, might it not be possible then to predict the future. If everything of the past and the present was known, then surely what was to be the future would follow naturally.

  Aspley cupped his hand in the water to raise it to his lips.

  A hand shot up, seizing his wrist.

  Aspley looked down at the long slender fingers that grasped him so tightly. He had never felt such strength before. A head of black hair burst through the surface of the water. An immaculate white face followed, and he found himself gazing into eyes that were the colour of the sea. His first thought was a silly one. A kiss it seems is not required. And he knew it but could not stop himself from thinking it.

  “The thought itself was enough,” she said.

  Aspley was lost for words. He reached out to touch her face, felt his fingers touch her skin. So soft, so beautiful.

  “Colonel Richard Aspley,” she said, “why do you disturb my dreams? Besides I have not given you permission to drink.”

  “I’m a captain,” Aspley said. “Not a colonel.”

  “You are a colonel now. I have decided it. I ask you again: why do you wish to disturb my dreams?”

  “I belong to the Black Flag. Only the queen can grant me a promotion,” Aspley said.

  “And she has. Look in your pocket.”

  Aspley looked down at his clothes. They were dry now.

  “Aspley!”

  Powell’s voice.

  The grip on his hand released. Aspley saw her floating on the pond, once more asleep. Once more he was dreaming, he thought. In the desert and in the sea. It was all dreams. There was nothing that he understood as the real world anymore.

  “Aspley!”

  Aspley turned. Powell stood against a white wall. Water was pouring from his clothes, as if he had just been plucked out of the sea. His face was swollen plump and as white as a sheet. Powell tried to say something more, but a great gush of seawater shot from his mouth, stealing his words. He fell to his knees, slumped forward. His head cracked against the cold marble floor.

  Aspley rushed to him. Powell’s eyes opened briefly, but there seemed no life behind them. His lips quivered. Bubbles frothed in his mouth. He had breathed too soon, Aspley thought, rolling Powell over and pushing his weight down upon his back. More seawater flowed from Powell’s mouth. Once, twice, three times, Aspley squeezed the green water out of him.

  Then there was nothing more to do. Powell lay empty and still. His chest did not rise. He did not breathe. Aspley turned him over and stared at the dull death upon his bloated face.

  The angels, their heavenly wisdom not remiss

  Blew your first sweet breath that very morn

  The words of Powell’s poem floated into his mind. The angels blew your breath. Aspley took a great breath and filled his lungs until they were near bursting. He squeezed Powell’s cheeks to force his mouth open, then placed his lips over Powell’s. Oh, sweet kiss, he imagined Powell saying, oh divine and mysterious wind. Aspley exhaled with all the strength in his body, watched as Powell’s chest rose and fell. He waited. It did not rise again. Aspley took another breath and breathed it into Powell. Powell’s chest rose, then fell, but still he did not breathe.

  “Live, damn you, live!” Aspley cried and thumped Powell upon the chest in his frustration. “I will kill you if you do not wake up. I will kill you and no one shall blame me because you are surely dead anyway.”

  Aspley laughed madly at the thought of it. Killing a dead man! The sound of his laughter bounced and echoed off the walls of the chamber. It spun around and around until it had turned to a hum that rose to the top of the dome with a faint buzz like a distant swarm of bees.

  Aspley thumped him once more. “Damn you!” he cried. Powell’s chest rose. Aspley breathed deeply and placed his lips over Powell’s once more. I give you my breath. I will you to live.

  Powell’s eyes opened. His lips moved. His voice came out in a croak. “I am a drowned man.”

  “Not here,” Aspley said, “not here. No one drowns here.”

  Then the song commenced once more. Words that Aspley didn’t understand seemed to be telling him the story of his life. He turned his gaze back towards the steps, up towards the pool. “Wait,” he said to Powell, “I’ll find som
e fresh water.”

  Aspley turned in the grip of the song. Nothing here is possible, he told himself as he climbed the steps. Powell and I are both drowned men. There is no reason for us to live, yet we do. Dreams, it is all dreams....

  * * *

  Colonel Aspley found himself sitting in a pleasant tearoom somewhere in one of Her Majesty’s colonies. The table before him was immaculate with its white linen, china plates, and silver service. A glass of brandy glowed in its crystal goblet close by his hand.

  He thought for a moment that he had no idea what he was doing there, that perhaps in his dotage he was finally losing his mind; then the whole reason for it entered his head like a thrust from above. He was there to meet a young lady that he had had some fruitful and intellectual correspondence with. At his age, it was a frivolity on his part. He knew that, but yet the correspondence had revealed that this young lady knew much about history, understood so much about the ins and outs of it and its relentless inexorable flow towards infinity.

  Infinity? Such a meaningless word, Aspley thought. Nothingness would be more appropriate. For surely everybody was to die without ever knowing if it had all been worth the effort. Nothingness and meaninglessness. All difficult words, but this young lady seemed to understand them better than anyone he had ever communicated with before, perhaps better than he understood it all himself. Clearly, Lady Clio Anderson was intelligent and mature beyond her years.

  Then he saw her walking across the room, in silken grey, a smart little hat on her head and a fashionable veil covering her face, but even at a distance the veil could not hide the deep penetrating look from her dark green eyes. And a beauty to match, Aspley thought.

  “So we meet again,” she said as she sat down. She offered her hand to Aspley. He took her cool white fingers and kissed them. Had they met before, Aspley wondered. He did not know, yet the look in her eyes was deeply familiar.

  “A pleasure,” Aspley said.

  “Colonel Aspley, I have a great favour to ask,” she said and winked at him.

  That wink surprised Aspley. He had no idea what it meant, and he suddenly felt awkward sitting there, an old man with a beautiful young woman. “I am at your service,” he said.

  “You must not let Major Powell kill me,” Lady Clio said. “You will do yourself and the world a great injustice. If I die, your Queen shall lose her Empire. Is that what you want? Not that I much care about your Queen or her Empire, but she is a means to an end at the moment, and I would prefer to have her alive and dominant than not. At least she brings some order to the world.”

  Aspley’s hand shook as he reached for the brandy. What nonsense was this; yet there was something in the back of his mind that told him that it was not nonsense at all. “Major Powell died many years ago.”

  He looked into Lady Clio’s eyes, open so wide now that, for a moment, dear old Aspley felt that he had fallen through her pupils and into her soul. His head began to swim...

  * * *

  The Journal of Captain Richard Aspley...

  ...was enclosed within a waterproof tin, lying at the bottom of the sea. There to be encrusted by molluscs and crustaceans, upon which fish would nibble from time to time, and revealing nothing to anyone anymore.

  * * *

  Another Line in the Sand

  Sergeant McKenzie did not move, or at least not fast enough, for Powell in quick strides across the sand was past Aspley and by McKenzie’s horse. He seized the reins and levelled his revolver at the sergeant’s head.

  “Should I blast the sergeant’s brains away to Kingdom Come? You know me, Aspley. I will do it. Sergeant McKenzie, you have your orders. Instruct your men to cross Captain Aspley’s line.”

  Sergeant McKenzie did not flinch, nor choose to look at Powell. This was clearly not the first time he had had a gun pointed at him. He stared dead ahead, locking his eyes on the horizon.

  Bensen and O’Neill, high on the dray, grabbed their rifles and levelled them at Powell, waiting to see what the sergeant would do. Aspley sensed it, knew in that moment that he had only to give the command and Bensen would fire. O’Neill perhaps not. But he could issue the order and it would be over, done with, and no one would blame him for saving Sergeant MacKenzie’s life and returning the men to safety. It had been witnessed by all that Powell was beyond all reasoning.

  Aspley wavered for one second, but not two. “Shoot him,” he commanded. Bensen fired, then O’Neill too.

  Two shots thumped into Powell’s chest. Two red fountains sprayed, prettily in the harsh sunlight.

  Powell turned slowly to look at Aspley. His arm dropped; his Adams fell from his fingers, thudding onto the red sand. A trickle of blood emerged from between his lips and ran down his chin as he spoke. “You think the Game is over, Captain Aspley? You are more fool than I thought. This Game, it never ends.”

  * * *

  “That is how it happened,” Colonel Aspley said, remembering how he had buried Powell and turned the expedition back. They had retreated to the green hills and navigated their way down the Cremorne in a boat of their own making, with the sails and mast that had been stored away in the bottom of the dray.

  He remembered too that horrible Black Flag Commission in Kalicut where he had been required to justify in absolute minute detail the decision he had made. It had not been a murder trial, but it had felt like it. And afterwards, all those years of guilt, without him ever really knowing if he had made the right decision.

  “That is the way it might have happened,” Lady Clio said. “The way I wished for it, but my powers wane. Instead, I did what I could and plucked you from the sea. I called for you first, but you didn’t listen. Too busy with your work, too busy with your desk. Powell answered the call and brought you too. How fortunate that was for both of us. You must kill him now before he kills me. I’m offering you the future.”

  Ah, yes. There had been the boat that crossed the inland sea. He had seen Powell hanging limp and dead beside him, sinking in the water, the weight of his silly gun pulling him down. “The future is unwritten,” he said, trying to make sense of his memories. “You told me that yourself in one of your letters. No, it was in the library, wasn’t it?”

  “I am giving you the chance to write it,” Lady Clio said. “Powell will not use the full twelve chambers against me. He will not risk his own life. He is foolhardy, but he will not face certain death. Eleven though will surely kill me, as it is meant to do.”

  The God-Killer, Aspley thought, that was what the Black Flags boys had called the Adams revolver when deep in their cups. He had believed it idle talk; pure braggadocio.

  Lady Clio leant across the table. “You saved Powell once... I gave you that choice and you carried out your duty. Now that you know more, you have another choice before you.”

  “You could have left us in the sea,” Aspley said. “Powell was a drowned man.”

  Lady Clio raised the veil from her face.

  A soft sigh escaped Aspley’s lips. Such radiant beauty. I saw you in a pool. Floating there, dreaming there. I interrupted your dreams and now....

  She winked at him once more. “Leave you in the sea? Now where would have been the sport in that?”

  Suddenly, there was a commotion at the end of the room. Aspley looked up to see Powell burst through the tearoom doors, pushing the waiters aside as he entered.

  “Ah, here is Major Powell now. You’ll excuse me for a moment,” Lady Clio said. “You and he have much to discuss, I’m sure.”

  Aspley caught a rustle of grey silk in the corner of his eye as the Lady departed and thought for a moment that he heard the splashing of water as if someone had dived into a pool.

  Now Aspley found himself lost between past and present as if time itself was swirling around him. The dead man walks. It is but a ghost come to torment me in my senility, but yet he remembered Powell’s dying words. “The Game, it never ends.”

  Powell strode across the room, cutting a very fine figure indeed for a dead man. The bra
ss buttons of his scarlet jacket shone brilliantly beneath the light of the tearoom’s chandeliers.

  Colonel Aspley rose slowly, pushing his spectacles up his nose as he did so. Powell flipped a finger across the length of his elegant black moustache. He pulled a chair out and swung himself into it.

  “My God, Aspley, what have you let her do to you? You look like you’ve aged fifty years. First she tries to drown us, now this?” Powell looked across the table. “Is that brandy you’re drinking? Give it here.”

  Aspley sat down, pushed the glass across the stiff tablecloth. Powell drank the brandy down in one go.

  “You’re dead,” Aspley said. “I saw Bensen and O’Neill shoot you in the desert. I saw you sinking in the sea.”

  “Oh, yes, she’s given you two lives to play with, has she? Well, I didn’t get shot in the desert, and we did cross your line. It was a nice move actually, Aspley, a very clever move on your part. I suspect that if you hadn’t done what you did, then Akaela would have never turned up when we needed him. It really put the pressure on, and he only turns up when there’s a crisis. So good work, Captain. It got us the camels and the extra supplies and got us to where we are now.”

  Powell reached across the table and tore the spectacles from Aspley’s face. “You don’t need these,” he said. “There were three times when the power was in your hands to end my life. Bensen would have killed me if you’d given the command. You did not. And then when I fought with Akaela, you had your gun on him and me. It would have been an easy decision to make. You did not shoot. And then when I was plucked out of the sea, you breathed life back into me. So I think, despite the lady’s wishes, you will not end it now.”

  Powell leaned across the table and kissed Aspley on the cheek. “Remember, you were my chosen one.”

  And with that kiss, Aspley found the years of guilt rising from his shoulders. Powell was still alive! He felt a great stiffness leaving his muscles, and he found himself feeling invigorated, as if the energy of his youth had returned to him. He had not killed the major. And he could see, by god, he could see, just as Akaela had told him. He touched his face, traced fingertips across smooth skin.