That, she knew, was the grip of the brandy on him, and she said sharply, ‘That is new then, for you’ve spoken of little else the night but the message you bring to Avignon.’
He did not look at her, but said again, ‘I’ll not see Avignon.’
So she left them, the dour cold captain, and Antoine full of dry devilment, and Patrick Molloy in his drunken gloomy dream. In the morning when she saw him once more, he was as cheerful and bold as the bright winds carrying them south. But he talked no more of the Rising. Nor of Avignon.
They were two weeks at sea, in the southern reaches of the Bay of Biscay, when they first saw the sails of another ship. It was a fine warm day, with a good wind on their larboard beam. The Sea-Harrower strove steadily southward, beneath her clouds of white canvas. Marsali sat on the sun-washed deck of the forecastle, barefoot as in Trotternish, luxuriating in the warmth. Ishbel wandered about the deck, restless, her hands needing the milking of cows or the work of the wheel, and lost without those tasks. She had taken to tucking herself well in beneath her bonnet, for fear the sun would do some unimagined harm to her ancient complexion. Marsali laughed at her and discarded her linen cap and let down her hair so the sun baked all of it. Secretly she hoped the light and salt would bleach streaks of it blond as Mistress Annandale’s yellow curls that Antoine had fancied.
He lay beside her, sprawled out lazily on the whitened wood of the deck, stroking the ends of her hair into tails and plaiting them, one by one.
‘Away,’ she cried. ‘It will all be knots and tangles.’
He laughed softly and continued, but then forgot his game and stretched like a cat and stood up and wandered across to the rail. He was tanned darkly by the sun already, and looked more Spanish and foreign than ever. Something out in the blue emptiness caught his attention, and he paused and then leapt up, onto the rail, and stood, precariously balancing and looking out to the west.
‘Marsali, come, look there,’ he called. When she did, she saw, also, the distant white blotch on the horizon.
‘A ship,’ she said.
‘Aye, and she’s bound across our course.’
He ran at once to the helmsman at the wheel and snatched up the spyglass kept there beside him, then ran again to the rail. Ishbel scurried over and said to Marsali, alarmed, ‘What is it, what is it?’ Antoine ignored them both and, finding his vision not good enough, leapt down from the rail and ran to the mainmast shrouds, and was away up them, like a wild thing on his sure bare feet; up lower mast, and topmast, and topgallant. Then, calm as he had sat on the low rail, he perched easy on the high topgallant yard, his legs wrapped casually around it, and feet twined in the footropes, the whole swaying in great slow arcs as he watched, intently, out to sea.
He shouted something, in French, down to the decks, and a crewman took up the shout, and Captain de Veulle suddenly appeared from his cabin and hastened to the wheel. Antoine came, leaping and sliding down the shrouds, and jumped from halfway down the mainsail shroud to the shifting deck and ran to the captain’s side.
He handed him the spyglass, and Marsali, breaking free of Ishbel and dashing to him, saw that he was laughing lightly, and his eyes were gay. She heard him say, in French, ‘She carries no flag at all, which is scarce friendly, but her own affair, and nothing to do with us. But ’tis become a social matter when she takes to running out her guns.’
Ishbel shrieked, ‘Guns. Och Holy Mother, we will all be killed. ’Tis a pirate.’ And then Patrick Molloy appeared beside them, with a musket in his hands, and a wild light on his face.
‘Tell us now, will there be a fight?’ he cried to Antoine.
Ishbel set to moaning afresh, and Marsali could not hear above her what soft words the captain had for Antoine. Between those two cheerfully wild young men, he seemed more merchant clerk than ever.
‘Wheesht, woman,’ Marsali said, impatiently, ‘enough of your wailing. Get away to your cabin if you must, and hide, but quietly.’ Ishbel fled, still howling, her hands over her head as if cannon shot were already echoing about her. Over the starboard rail the approaching ship, angling in on a fast broad reach, loomed large. In the silence of Ishbel’s departure, she heard Maurice de Veulle say softly, and angrily, ‘I am paid to carry linen for your father, not play boy’s games for you.’
Antoine made some insult in French and said, ‘I think you will have little choice. She is intent upon us and has the faster course. And you’ll not surrender while I am alive.’
He whirled and caught Marsali’s arm, and, though he was calm and cheerful, she was sure she glimpsed a momentary concern in his face. ‘Now you, pretty cat, must go below, and stay below till I call you. Lie on the floor of your cabin and do not get up. My friends,’ he gestured to the approaching ship, ‘and I have a little game to play. A sea-game. Not for little cats. Go now.’ And he hastened her on her way, and turned, and seemed at once to forget her.
She ran off, after Ishbel, to the stern, with a great determined chaos all about her, sailors and gunners at their work, intent and quick, running up more canvas and ramming the guns with their loads of powder and shot. A ship’s officer was handing muskets out among the crew with grim calm. Not everyone thought it such a game.
Below, she found Ishbel, snugged like an old mouse under her bunk, telling her beads in a Gaelic wail. ‘’Tis like a wake in here, already, and there’s not yet dead,’ Marsali cried, exasperated. Suddenly rebellious, she dived for the great chest, burrowed through the silks and linens and found the carved handle of the Italian pistol, cool beneath her hand. She drew it out, carefully, and with it the ball and powder the English soldier had given her. She loaded it quickly and carefully, as her father had taught her to do with his own pistols.
Ishbel opened one eye at the noise. ‘Dear Jesus, what is it you have there?’
‘Never you mind, wifie, and hide your head lest some pirate take a fancy to your grey hairs.’ She smiled grimly, pistol in hand, suddenly become her father’s daughter.
‘And where will you be going?’ Ishbel gasped.
‘Not far, you can be sure, ’tis not that big a ship.’ Before Ishbel could do anything, she was away out the door, the pistol clasped in two hands. She was neither that brave, nor that carefree, but she could not bear for Antoine to be beyond the shelter of her eyes. If he must die, she must yet see.
As she reached the deck once more, the first of the cannon fired. It was a warning shot from the pirate, yet out of range and splashing harmless into the green sea; the sign to heave to and surrender. The Sea-Harrower replied at once with a single shot of her own, from the first of her starboard guns, and Marsali felt the decks shudder beneath her with the recoil. A cloud of black powder smoke puffed up in the bows of the ship. She could not see Antoine anywhere.
Patrick Molloy was standing on the starboard rail, musket in hand, waving a fist and cheerfully shouting abuse, the words lost in the wind. Oh, Norman would have done that, she knew, and she felt a wild kind feeling for the reckless fool. The two ships angled in, narrowing the green gap between them, seeking range, both now and on a broad reach, heeling far over in the white-frothed sea.
They were beautiful, like living creatures, and she could see why Antoine would rather die than surrender that one thing he loved.
She saw him then, high in the rigging of the mainmast, his feet on the topgallant yard, watching, silent, like a cat-beast in a tree. He had been joined by a dozen other men, scattered throughout the rigging, and they all watching him as he watched the pirate. Suddenly he twisted around and with a short sharp wave signalled to the master on the poop deck who shouted something in French. The order to fire, Marsali saw, for the length of the starboard deck echoed with the sudden thunder of the cannon, and the gunners were enveloped in the black smoke.
The sea about the pirate splashed white with the failed shot, but her bowsprit cracked and shattered, and the spritsails fluttered to the deck, and the topgallant yard of the mizzen flung wildly free in a tatter of canvas and rope.
The sailors in the Sea-Harrower’s rigging cheered aloud, and Patrick Molloy cried out, ‘There now, ye buggers, damn yer eyes!’ He was laughing and brandishing the musket, and not yet within range for it, and fair dancing on the starboard rail. Only the gunners were silent, swabbing and reloading their black cannon, and then the pirate returned her own broadside and the rail nearest Marsali disappeared in a cloud of splintering wood and she was flung flat on the deck, the pistol breaking free of her hands with the force.
She caught it up again at once and scrambled to hands and knees. The first starboard cannon was a smoking ruin and beside it a young sailor with a blond plait of hair, blood streaked, was lying quietly looking at the sky, bewildered. There was blood all around him on the deck and more soaking his clothes, and his left leg ended now above the knee in white splinters of bloody bone. Marsali stepped nearer him and then turned away, sick, and cried out to Patrick Molloy to come and help. He turned once, saw her, and shouted, ‘Away colleen, ’tis no place for yerself here.’ As for the blood-soaked sailor, he only shrugged and shook his head, knowing death when he saw it.
So Marsali stayed, shrunken against the forecastle bulkhead, her eyes on Antoine, swaying high above the devastation. He signalled to the master and the gunners fired once more and were replied to at once by the pirate. There was again a shattering in the rigging of each, and a splintery black hole appeared above the waterline in the bow of the pirate above the name Well-Met.
It was madness, she knew; they grew closer and closer, within musket range now, and would surely pound away at each other until both were flotsam on the sea, and the men on each bloody ruins like the poor gunner on the deck. Patrick Molloy raised his musket and fired, and a man fell from the pirate’s rigging. He shouted with delight, one arm looped about a stay, half dancing yet on the rail, loading his gun as he did. ‘Ah ’tis grand, ’tis grand,’ he was shouting to the open sky.
The master called out an order and Antoine took it up and it was relayed by a dozen voices and the great square sails on mainmast and foremast came tumbling down at once in a chaos of white.
‘Fer the love of God, ye buggers, what’re ye doin’?’ Patrick Molloy cried out, offended, for at once the Sea-Harrower lost way, and the pirate ploughed on past beyond her reach. Patrick howled abuse up at the rigging, and as if in reply the sails were hauled up at once. Marsali saw then, it was not for Patrick, but a cleverer plan.
The bow came around and as the broad sails took the wind behind them, the Sea-Harrower plunged downwind across the Well-Met’s stern. The master called clearly, ‘Fire as ye bear,’ and, as each gunport passed the centre of the narrow stern, its gunner set flame to fuse. The Well-Met too turned her bow and struggled to gain again the safer broadside and bring her own guns back to bear. But before she did, she had taken six shots to her vulnerable stern, her rudder was shattered and the mizzenmast, severed at its rooting beneath the decks, came crashing down like a tree in the forest, dragging men and sails with it to the sea.
Patrick Molloy leapt from his starboard rail as the Sea-Harrower turned and dashed past Marsali, scant seeing her in his eagerness to be in on the kill.
On the larboard, now facing the enemy, he perched once more, bringing his musket to bear on the helpless sailors struggling with their dying ship. Marsali cried out suddenly, ‘Patrick, ’tis enough. They are doomed and will drown. Let be.’
He turned his blue innocent eyes upon her, quite mystified, and said aloud, ‘’Twas a fair fight, colleen.’ Then a thin man on the listing deck of the Well-Met but forty feet away, seeing him turn, took quick aim and fired, and Patrick spun off the rail and fell dead at her feet. Because of her, of her alone.
Filled with rage, tempered by guilt, she became a thing of her father’s blood. She raised the Italian pistol carefully in two strong hands, as once against the English soldier, but now for the avengement of Patrick Molloy. But she did not fire.
A last vengeful boom of cannon from the Well-Met was answered at once from the Sea-Harrower. Their own shot was lucky and struck a powder barrel, and smoke and flame roared up from the pirate’s deck. But above Marsali’s head there was a crackling and crashing, and she whirled and saw the main topgallant, where Antoine was standing, splinter and topple, slowly yet, tangled in rigging. Antoine was flung free by the force and fought desperate for his life, twisting like a cat in mid-air. But she saw him fall then, plunging full length the fifty feet into the wreckage-strewn sea.
Marsali ran to the larboard rail, climbing up on it and peering frantic down into the smoke-shrouded sea. In the water there was nothing but the wreckage of ships and the bloody wreckage of men. The Well-Met was sinking, and on her burning decks her sailors had forgotten them, each now seeking his own survival. The ship shook with a great explosion, and then another, as her kegs of black powder went up. The sea around her frothed and boiled.
Marsali turned her back. She looked, bewildered, at Patrick on the deck, and powerfully lonely, crept forward and knelt beside him, the pistol resting on her knee. She reached a hand forward and compulsively touched the blood soaking the back of his head. She thought of Antoine on the shore of Trotternish, and the salt-wet hair she had stroked. Salt-wet, blood-wet, the sea gave nothing up.
The sun was yet sweet, thin, through the smoke of powder and flame. She thought of Avignon, where she must go now, alone, and when she bent her head to pray for Patrick and for Antoine, the words came, in her father’s way, as a curse instead: Prince Tearlach, you trail wreckage behind you, as much as this evil ship. God grant an early end for you both … Then she cried, alone, amidst the chaos of victory.
‘’Twas a fair fight, lassie,’ said a voice behind her. She whirled about and raised the pistol, instinctively, hearing a man where none had been. It was Antoine, leaning against the railing over which he had climbed, his whole self dripping water as though he were indeed a sea-thing.
‘Holy Mother, how can it be?’ she cried, terrified.
‘Will you be putting that thing away, afore you shoot me with it? ’Tis enough facing pirates in a day, without wild women with guns.’
‘Surely you were killed.’
He flopped down suddenly on the deck, his back against the larboard rail, arms linked loosely around one bent leg. He leaned back, his eyes closed, exhausted. ‘Och surely,’ he said sourly. ‘And the day of resurrection is apparently upon us. Give poor Patrick a nudge and he’ll be getting up too.’
‘For shame,’ she whispered. ‘That is terrible blasphemy.’
He did not open his eyes, but said softly, ‘Is it now? Forgive me then.’ He sounded genuinely remorseful.
‘I saw the mast break. You went into the sea.’
‘I can swim,’ he said sharply. Then he looked at her, tired yet, and smiled. ‘Och pretty cat, in the south seas, in the calms when all is boredom, we jump from those for fun.’ He gestured to the high yardarms. ‘If I’d known you would worry, I’d have told you, on the way down.’ He grinned and then laughed softly under his breath. ‘Are you glad to have me back then, little cat?’
She sighed, fingering the pistol. ‘Yes, though why I am, I do not know, nor why you should be spared. Look now the wreckage of your game.’ She stood up and waved a hopeless tired hand towards the sinking pirate. Men were jumping free of her and into the sea, and once there, clinging to the timbers of their wrecked ship, they shouted out for help from their erstwhile victim.
‘You will not help them,’ she said, resigned, knowing the answer.
‘They would be trouble,’ he said shrugging, and turning away. ‘We must make for calmer waters now, before the night. We have troubles enough of our own.’ He gestured to the broken topgallant of the mainmast. The Sea-Harrower was slightly enough damaged, for all that, but still they would seek refuge now to make repairs, before sailing on for Gibraltar.
‘I did not start it, Marsali,’ he said, as in defence.
‘You did not avoid it.’
He shrugged again and gestured towards Pat
rick, lying in his own blood on the deck. He said, ‘Nor did he. I am guilty only of surviving. A day again, it might have been the other way around. And I assure you, he’d not be mourning me. Besides, he is a good Christian like yourself, why should he mind dying?’ He looked at her steadily, with his clear calm eyes, sure of his brutal unanswerable logic. Then he smiled, suddenly sly, and said, ‘Will you be telling me now, what a good Christian lass is doing with so fine a pistol? I have not seen that afore.’
Marsali gasped, taken off balance, and said quickly, ‘Surely it was my father’s, and he gave it to me for my protection.’
‘Surely,’ Antoine said calmly. ‘Perhaps he feared I would rape you. It is Italian. Where did he get it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said and then added quickly, ‘No doubt my brother Norman brought it from his travels. He was in Rome, long ago.’
‘No doubt. I will be asking the old wifie. She will, like all old folk, no doubt remember more clearly.’
‘No.’
‘And why not?’
‘She did not know I had it with me. It will worry her, she is easy panicked, poor soul. Please, I will tell her it is yours, that you lent me it when the pirates came.’
‘Surely. And if I lent it, I will now have it back,’ he said smiling lightly.
‘You’ve no right, Antoine,’ she said angrily. ‘It is mine, and I yet may need it.’
‘No matter.’ He smiled again, engagingly, reaching for the pistol. ‘If I fancy the raping of you, I do not wish to be shot for my trouble.’ But she pulled away, and he did not pursue her. He turned away and said quietly, ‘You may lie to your nurse, and lie to your father, lassie, for all I am caring. Keep it if you will, and tell Ishbel what you want. But you’re not wise to lie to me.’ With that he got up and went coolly off to change his wet clothes, like a gentleman caught in an unexpected shower of rain.
The Sea-Harrower sailed quietly eastward, to a cove in the empty Portuguese shore, and the Well-Met and her crew slipped piecemeal beneath the sea.
The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance Page 14
