I made my screaming-infant face out of frustration, reached into the little scrape again, and tried to feel the shape of it with my fingers. It was just narrower than my hand, but there was no fingerhold broad enough to hold any weight, just black rock sluiced with water.
I dared not look down and view the heave and scend of the black water that waited for me. Instead I began to try to think of something I could jam into the scrape that could support my weight.
But I had nothing. I carried a small knife for eating, but there was no way to jam it into the little scrape. I considered and rejected items of clothing, which wouldn’t be firm enough to hold. And then I thought, lacking else, I might jam myself into the gap.
I worked my left hand into the gash, palm outward, and then made a fist, so that my hand pressed hard against the walls of the gap. Then I carefully pulled myself up by my hand and found that my jammed hand would support my weight.
Triumph flashed through my veins and warmed my chilled limbs. I may have laughed out loud. With slow care I regained my footholds, and then unclenched my hand. In order to swing farther to the left, it would have to be my right hand in the narrow gap, not the left.
Again I put in my hand; again I tested it to see if it would take my weight. Nothing crumbled away. With my left hand I reached for the line tied around my waist and snapped it out so that it wouldn’t foul my legs. Then I took careful aim at the foothold and swung myself like a pendulum out into the void, supported only by my fist and my wayward hopes.
I scrabbled at the narrow ledge with my foot but failed to find purchase, and I swung back. I scraped the rock, found my old footholds, then took a breath of salt-tainted air and swung again. This time my foot found the ledge, tested it, and found it would support me.
With prudence I pushed upward, rising up the rock face, my left hand groping for a handhold. I found a small crack filled with soaking-wet moss, and I tore the moss away in order to establish a better hold. Now with my left foot and hand supported, I was able to unjam my right hand and venture farther onto the rock face. I replaced my left hand with my right, and then my left foot with my right foot, and then was able to grope farther out onto the rock, and there found a secure foothold, for all that I had to kick away a gannet before finding a reliable lodgment.
From this point it became much easier. The cracks and breaks in the rock were more frequent, and I was able to move upward with rising confidence until the rock face fell away inward—and, gasping for breath and clutching my wounded hands to my breast, I was able to scramble to a summit that seemed capped with snow.
But it was not snow, for the white cap moved. A hundred startled gannets shifted away from me in a kind of tide, dislodging other gannets as they moved. The gannets completely filled their rookery from one end to the other, a muttering mob of seabirds and their young, all hunched against the storm-wind that now struck me with full force, freezing me to the bone. What was not covered with gannets was covered in their droppings, and even the furious sea-wind did not entirely whip away the stench.
A woman stood there, clothed in a black, hooded cloak that did not entirely conceal her pale skin, brilliant green eyes, and streaming red hair.
“Well, Quillifer,” said Orlanda. “I see you have returned at last to your homeland, and in much worse shape than when you left.”
CHAPTER THREE
I wondered when I would see you,” I said.
A cynical smile, or possibly contempt, curled Orlanda’s lip. The wind-rippled strands of brilliant red hair blazed like tongues of flame around her face.
“You weren’t doing anything amusing till now,” she said. “Unless of course I was intended to be entertained by that drear parade of foreign women in your life.”
“I didn’t find them drear,” said I. “Quite the opposite. And I hardly knew you found their exotic nature so offensive.”
“No more offensive than their other attributes.” Her chin tilted in the vast dark hood, and her green-eyed glance turned thoughtful. “It occurred to me that, as I’ve promised not to harm anyone you love, you might have been trying to render all womankind immune to my vengeance.”
“That’s it!” said I. “You’ve uncovered my secret plot!”
You must understand that while we were having this conversation I was drawing up more line from below, then untying the line from my waist and throwing a loop around a black, rain-slick outcrop of rock. I tied a knot, then tugged on the rope to make certain it was anchored securely.
All simple, ordinary tasks to accompany a conversation that, but for the setting and the black-cloaked woman, might have been the most ordinary in the world. Orlanda’s brilliant green eyes followed me from one task to the next.
I went to the edge, flicked the line to send a long wave running down its length to the ship, and waved down to the crew on Royal Stilwell. A wave burst over the bow, the spray hurling itself like a white cloak over the half-submerged hull.
When the spray fell and dissolved, I saw arms wave in answer to mine and heard men’s cheers over the scream of the wind.
“That broken mizzenmast?” asked I. “That was your doing?”
She offered a self-satisfied smile. “I would not wish your return to be entirely without savor.”
I stared down at the black, all-consuming sea. Captain Gaunt had been cudgeling himself over having offended a god and caused the wreck. I had offered as an alternate the notion that the sins of one of the crew might instead be at fault, but I had done so without realizing that that crewman was myself.
“That savor might have killed a hundred men,” said I.
“Yet it did not, but instead will provide yet another excuse for you to vaunt your superiority over your fellow mortals. Not,” she added, “that you have ever required such an excuse.”
I laughed wearily. “Am I then to thank you? But yet,” I judged, “a broken mast seems under-subtle, not mischief but malice. Should you not be off whispering calumnies into the ears of the queen and her court?”
“And miss the chance to welcome you home? Did you really think I would fail to notice if you sailed into Selford harbor with a ship full of treasure?”
“I have sailed home before,” said I, “and no masts broke.”
“I am changeable,” said Orlanda. “This you know.”
And then she was gone, just as a sailor’s head appeared above the crest. I helped him rise into this little isle of gannets, and then helped as well the six young men who followed.
With the line to help them climb and brace their feet against the stone, they had risen to the top of the skerry with good speed, as quickly as they might scramble to the masthead of their ship. I was no longer alone on the rock.
I must pause for a moment, as I see a great many questions reflected in your eyes. I know they have to do with Orlanda, and I would defer the answers, if I may. For that is a long explanation, and it would delay the resolution of my story. Which, you may recall, tells of how I broke my finger.
I tailed onto the line along with the seven sailors, and we hauled up a light hawser. More men came up, including the chief mate, and then the entire party used the hawser to bring up a topgallant yard, which we lashed to the rocky outcrop, so that one end hung out over Royal Stilwell. On this we fixed a luff tackle, which is to say a pair of pulleys, one on the end of the yard, and the other down on the ship, and the two connected by a strong line. With this arrangement we could haul up practically anything, and we started by taking up more crewmen. These brought up the oilskins that we had left behind. I was grateful to wear oilskins again, for though I was soaked through, the oilskins at least kept the wind out, and created a kind of waterproof tent that allowed my body’s heat to warm the wet clothing now trapped against my skin.
Next up the block and tackle came canvas, which was used to make crude shelters, and barrels of fresh water and crates of biscuit. Then my strongbox arrived, courtesy of Captain Gaunt, and I placed it in one of the shelters. I decided I didn’t n
eed to put a guard on it, for it was oak strapped with iron and had a lock that, by a mechanism, shot seven bolts to secure the box. It would take a strong man with an axe to break it open, and that could hardly be done in secret. The key to the lock I kept around my neck on a chain.
More men came up, and with them some of the valuable cargo, the boxes of fragrant spices we had acquired in Tabarzam: long pepper, allspice, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, and cinnamon. These few dozen boxes I placed in shelter, and then decided to go down to the ship to see what might next be saved.
The gannets made way for us and our cargo grudgingly and packed themselves into a dense white mass on the end of the island. Were we stranded for too long, I supposed we could eat them.
From the skerry I stepped out onto the lower of the two pulleys, took the standing part in one hand to steady myself, and then allowed myself to swoop down to the ship. I alighted on the quarterdeck to the general applause of the crew, and then with the captain went down to the lower deck, which, on account of the falling tide, was no longer awash. We surveyed the hold and decided which of the cargo could be shifted.
I left the captain to direct this work and went to my cabin under the poop. There I changed into dry clothing and added to my array a warm cheviot overcoat I had carried with me since the sack of Ethlebight. Once I’d accomplished this, I noticed the remains of my feast that remained on the table. I poured myself a cup of wine and helped myself to slices of ham, the pickled oysters, and the fine white manchet-bread. I ate till I was past full, and then poured myself more wine and had some cake.
The provender would not be so good as this, I judged, for some time to come.
I donned oilskins and joined the captain where he was rousing the cargo from the hold. Boxes of spices and ivory swayed into the air. The crew were in good cheer, with promise of a little profit in addition to the preservation of their lives. I decided to return to the island, and I stood atop a cedarwood box of nutmegs as it swayed aloft, my right hand holding the standing part just above the tackle.
No one had noticed that the box had been damaged, and when I was fifty feet off the deck, the bottom fell clean out of it. Bags of nutmegs rained down on the sea and the deck, and with the box relieved of its heavy contents, the crew hauling on the line flew backward and sprawled on the deck. The box took a violent lurch and nearly flung me off. I snatched for support with my free hand, and my left hand caught at the tackle just as it shot skyward, and my little finger was caught in the pulley mechanism and very thoroughly broken.
You are very dear, the way you kiss that finger now. In truth, I felt little pain at the time, only a great shock to watch a part of my body caught in the pulley at the exact instant when my life seemed in such peril.
I was lowered to the deck by a gang of careful seamen, and though I held my damaged hand carefully, there was very much to do at that moment, and I managed to do it. The next box was examined more carefully and took me aloft without incident. And then once I was on the skerry, there was more work to do in shifting and stowing the rescued cargo, and though the pain had by that time settled in my hand, it had become a throb like the throb of my heart, of which I was aware only when I chose.
We rescued tons of cargo that day, and as the tide returned and summer brought an end to that long day, we brought up all the crew, even those who had been injured and that one officer who had fled to his cabin and barricaded himself inside. He had not the decency to be embarrassed by his behavior and offered no apology, but was quite regal in his bearing as he came to land, silent, but looking at us all as if we had confirmed his worst suspicions. We were not his shipmates, his attitude suggested, but his servants, and inept servants at that. He was the wise one, and his hiding in his cabin was a choice the wisdom of which was denied to the rest of us.
We also saved the ship’s cat and three of her four kittens, all of which had proved more useful than that officer.
We had not the time to puncture the mate’s pretensions, for there was more work to do. Eleven months earlier we had left Selford with over a hundred twenty crew, twice the number required to work the ship—we carried the extra in case of trouble, for the sea-road to Tabarzam is infested by pirates and other perils, and we needed enough hands to man the guns. Desertions and disease had reduced the crew by the time the storm struck us, and we lost a handful overboard at the first onset, and so when Royal Stilwell was wrecked, there were ninety-seven souls aboard. By the end of the day every one of those men was saved, and each slept safely that night in a snug home walled with boxes of cargo and roofed with canvas.
As night fell and Captain Gaunt, last of all, was brought up by the light of lanterns, the chief mate touched my shoulder and pointed to the northeast. “Sir Quillifer, look you. Lights on shore!”
I looked out and saw, not half a mile away across rolling surf and crashing waves, a series of blazing bonfires. Not on the clifftops, either, but below, on the shore, which told me that there was a shore, not just sheer cliffs running down into the water.
If we had managed to get round the skerry, we might have grounded the ship on that shore, in reasonable safety.
“They must have heard our gun,” the chief mate went on. “They cannot chance the surf in their boats, but they want us to know that succor is at hand.”
“Signal them with our lanterns,” I said. Within minutes, torches on the shore were waving back at us, and I felt my heart rise at the presence of those souls, so near, and the hope of rescue.
That night I slept on oilskins laid on the stony ground to make a dry bed, with my good cheviot overcoat as a blanket. The canvas overhead boomed in the wind, and the rain fell with a force that sounded like a hundred tambours. I slept alongside Captain Gaunt and the other officers, for we were packed together so that our bodies might keep warm, and whenever one of us had to turn over, he would call out, and we would all turn. Or so I am told, for I fell instantly to sleep, cradling my injured hand, and even if we turned continually like coneys on a spit, I did not know it, for I did not wake till dawn.
The storm was breaking up, with the royal sun red in the east, turning to scarlet the scudding clouds that flew along the horizon. The wind was reduced to a mild gale, but the great seas continued to thunder white against the shore and prohibited our rescuers from setting out. Squalls flew over the seas like castaways coming to land. And looking at the bay thus revealed by the morning, I recognized it.
Three years ago the previous autumn, as I left Ethlebight for my first visit to the capital of Selford, I had viewed that bay from the cliffs and remarked to myself how perfect a harbor it would make, for it was sheltered by the skerry on one side and a long ness on the other. There was a long, curving shingle beach, now strewn with the wrack of the storm, and grass-strewn soil between the shingles and the cliffs.
“This is Gannet Cove,” I told Captain Gaunt. “If we had only been able to weather the skerry, we would have been able to drop anchor in the bay and ride out the storm in peace.”
“The god would not have it so,” said the captain.
Say rather goddess, I thought darkly, but I put on a smiling, hearty-lad face and said, “Your seamanship has retrieved our fortunes. We will save most of the cargo, and we’ve saved all the men. As long as we have our lives, we may hope for better days, and better profit.”
The captain eyed my injured hand. It had turned purple overnight, and the injured finger was greatly swollen. “We should splint that finger.”
“A splint would be too cumbersome,” said I, “and prevent me from using the hand. Lash it to the next finger.”
The little finger was bound to my ring finger with strips of linen, and then we set about the day’s work. The tide had peaked two or three hours after midnight, and though Royal Stilwell still lay in its cradle of stone, it was clear that wind and waves had done their work. Part of the forecastle had been torn away, and the bow heavily damaged. Once the forepart of the ship was completely torn open, the seas would sweep through to t
he stern, and Royal Stilwell would not last more than a few days.
So we set to work to bring more cargo to the island, and it was not till midmorning that the sea grew less savage and we saw boats putting out from the shore. I joined Captain Gaunt on the ship to welcome our saviors, who proved to be some of the worthy fishermen of that coast. They brought us bread and goat-cheese and offered us the hospitality of their village, all of which we accepted with joy.
I offered as well to employ them on the rescue of our cargo, and to pay them good silver for the work. This cheered them, for they had expected to rescue destitute mariners entirely at their own expense, and so I went ashore with them to discuss the matter with their entire village.
On shore I found the local squire, who had come down from his house with food, drink, and his servants. I met with the headmen of the village and arranged to pay their people a greater wage than they could ever earn fishing; and I also employed as many of the squire’s folk as he was willing to provide.
I returned to Royal Stilwell with everything in train, and my strongbox came down from the skerry so that I could make advance payments. Then I, my strongbox, and such of my belongings as could be rescued from my cabin once more took the perilous route to shore. I managed to recover even my guitar.
The squire kindly loaned me his carriage, and I set out for my home city of Ethlebight, a long day’s journey to the west. The man who owned Royal Stilwell with me lived in Ethlebight, and I hoped to find him at home.
At the same time, the chief mate set out in the opposite direction, to Amberstone, three or four days’ journey even by post, in hopes that he could charter a deep-draught vessel to take all our cargo once we had rescued it.
Quillifer the Knight Page 4
