The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 784

They came at dawn, with chains and paint.

By the time the first boats should have been going out, the quay was closed. Police had run a chain from the fish market to the harbour office, and behind it Merriwether's clerks were working down the moorings with buckets of red paint and wide brushes, painting a crown on every hull.

On the harbour office door, a clerk nailed up a notice in Treasury type.

"By order of the Comptroller," a young fisherman read aloud, at the chain. "All vessels in Harland harbour are declared gifts of the Tenth Prince, made while in office, and revert to the Crown pending inspection."

"Gifts?" said the man next to him. "What gifts?"

"Your boat, apparently."

"My boat? He never gave me a boat. My grandfather built that boat!" The young man pointed down the moorings, at an old green hull with a clerk already crouched beside it, brush in hand. "That's my grandfather's boat! She was built before the prince was born!"

Merriwether stood on the harbour office steps, reading the notice himself, as if it were a menu.

"Then protest," he said pleasantly. "In writing. The Crown will reply in due course."

…

The crowd grew. By seven there were five hundred people at the chain, and by eight there were a thousand.

"What's he going to do with them?" a woman asked. "Sail two hundred boats to the capital?"

"Sell them," said the man beside her. "Or let them rot. Either way they're not ours."

"And the cable ship? Is that a gift too?"

"Don't give him ideas, Maud."

At the end of the second mooring sat an old boat with a blue stripe, her name worn to a ghost: Margaret.

Tom had named her for his wife, fifty-two years ago, the spring they married. Margaret had been dead for eleven years now, and Tom had never once taken the boat out without saying good morning to her name. The whole harbour knew it. They had always pretended not to hear.

Old Tom was standing in front of her.

He had his stick in one hand and the other hand flat on Margaret's bow, and he was not moving.

"Out of the way, grandad," said the clerk with the brush.

"No."

"It's an order of the Treasury."

"Then the Treasury can come and move me itself."

"Grandad, I've got two hundred of these to do before lunch."

"Then start with somebody else's," Tom said. "Fifty-two years I've fished from her."

"It's still Crown property, grandad."

"She's no gift," Tom said. "Nobody gave her to me. I paid for every plank."

A policeman came down the mooring, young and bored and on duty since four.

"Back, old man."

"I said no."

The policeman put a hand on Tom's chest and shoved. It was not even a hard shove. Tom was seventy, and he went down on the wet stones with his stick clattering away from him.

The crowd at the chain surged. The chain held. The police pulled their batons.

"Get your hands off him!"

"He's seventy, you coward!"

"Back! Back from the chain!" the sergeant shouted. "Next man over it goes in the van!"

"Mark that one," Merriwether called from the steps. "Mark that one twice."

The clerk painted two crowns on Margaret's bow, one above the other, while Tom lay on the stones and watched him do it.

…

Lord Fennick came down from the residence at a fast walk.

"Comptroller. Comptroller, a word."

"Of course, Lord Fennick."

"These are people's livings." Fennick kept his voice low. "If the boats don't go out, the island doesn't eat. You can't hold them until — when is the inspection?"

"Spring," Merriwether said.

"Spring?"

"The Crown inspectors are very busy." Merriwether turned to the crowd and raised his voice, so that the back rows could hear. "Let me be perfectly clear, so nobody can say they weren't told. Not one boat leaves this harbour before the Crown inspects it. Not one oar goes in the water. Anyone who takes a marked boat out, for any reason, will be arrested and charged with theft of Crown property. They will sail," he said, "to prison."

"Spring?" somebody shouted. "We'll starve by spring!"

The old ones knew what that meant. Years ago, before the prince, the ferry had stopped for one winter, and the island had lived on salt fish and the church's flour until March. Two children had died that winter. Nobody on Harland had ever forgotten their names.

“Then protest,” Merriwether snapped. “Put it in writing! If you’re desperate to point fingers, blame the tenth prince—the one who stripped you of everything you had!”

"Lord Fennick," somebody called, "you're the governor! Say something!"

Fennick opened his mouth. Merriwether looked at him. Fennick closed it.

"I'll — I'll write to the ministry," Fennick said.

"Please do. They'll reply in due course."

…

Somebody helped Tom up onto a bollard. There was blood on his knuckles.

"Are you hurt, Tom?"

"I'm seventy. Everything's hurt." He looked up the quay. "Here he comes."

The prince was coming down from the residence, a little slow, hands in his coat pockets, as if the quay were a garden path.

"Your Highness!"

"Prince, you have to stop this!"

"You're still a prince! Tell him!"

Alexander stopped at the chain, a thousand people with their eyes on his face.

"You heard the Comptroller," he said.

The quay went quiet.

"Do what he says," Alexander said slowly, like a slow man repeating a lesson to himself. "Exactly what he says. Don't touch a single boat. Not one. Whatever happens."

Nobody spoke.

"Whatever happens," Alexander said again. "Do you understand me? Not one boat. Even if he begs you."

"Even if he begs?" Somebody laughed, a short ugly laugh. "Why would he beg?"

Old Tom stood up off the bollard. His knuckles were bleeding onto the stones.

"I said I was wrong about you," he said. "I said it in front of everybody." He spat on the quay, at the prince's feet. "Maybe I was wrong about being wrong."

"Tom," Felicia said.

"Don't you Tom me, girl." He picked up his stick. "He's selling us to keep his own skin."

Felicia turned to Alexander. Her cheek was still purple under her hair, and her eyes were wet.

"Prince," she said quietly. "They'll starve."

"Not for long," Alexander said.

"What does that mean?"

He didn't answer. He was looking down the quay, at berth one, where police were carrying things aboard the Treasury launch.

"What are they loading?" he asked.

"The cash boxes from the government office," Felicia said. "The ledgers. And — " She stopped.

"And?"

"That case. The brown one." Her voice went small. "That's the one he put my tin in. And the ring."

"With the list taped to the lid," Alexander said. "Good."

"Good?"

…

That night the harbour was dark. Nobody was allowed aboard to light a lamp.

There was only the moon on the water and the red crowns on two hundred hulls, black in that light, like old blood.

At half past one, Alexander walked the quay alone.

The policeman on the chain was asleep in a plastic chair with his cap over his eyes. Alexander stepped over the chain and walked down the moorings to berth one.

The Treasury launch rode low in the water, heavy with what she carried. White hull. Blue pennant. A brass plate by the gangway: Crown Treasury Service.

He crouched on the edge of the quay. He took off his glove. He reached down and laid his bare palm flat against the hull, below the waterline, where the cold sea moved against the paint.

He kept it there for three breaths.

"Safe trip, Comptroller," he said, to nobody at all.

Then he put his glove back on and walked back the way he had come. He stepped over the chain. The policeman was still asleep.

Felicia was waiting on the residence steps in her coat, with her arms wrapped round herself.

"Where were you?"

"Walking."

"At half past one? On the quay?"

"I like the quay at night."

"You've never liked anything at night except sleeping." She looked at his gloves. "Prince. What did you do?"

"I said goodbye to a boat," Alexander said, and went in.

…

In the morning, the whole island heard it from the town crier's van, driving slowly round the harbour with its loudspeaker on top.

"The Comptroller wishes it to be known that he sails at noon. He thanks the people of Harland for their gifts. And he would like," the loudspeaker said, "the whole island to come and see him off."

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