by Paul Kearney
The Grace’s decks were also crowded with soldiers and passengers, hampering the work of the sailors. It was to be expected; this would be the last real sight of land they would have for many days. For most of them, Hawkwood supposed, it was probably their last ever sight of Hebrion and gaudy old Abrusio. Their fates were set in the west, now.
“How is the supercargo settling in?” he asked the fuming Billerand.
“We’ve hammocks slung fore and aft the length of the gundeck, but God help us if we’re brought to action, Captain. We’ll have to cram the whole miserable crowd of them down with the cargo or in the bilge.” That thought made his face brighten a little. “Still, the soldiers will be useful.”
Billerand had time for soldiers; he had been one himself. For Hawkwood, they were just another nuisance. He had thirty-five of them here on the Osprey, the rest on the caravel. Two-thirds of the expedition travelled in the carrack, including Murad and both his junior officers. Hawkwood had had to partition the great cabin with an extra bulkhead so the nobility might sail in the style it was accustomed to. The sailors were berthed in the forecastle, the soldiers in the forward part of the gundeck. They would be living cheek by jowl for the next few months. And they had so many stores on board for the setting up of the colony, to say nothing of provisions for the voyage, that both ships sat low in the water and were sluggish answering the tiller. It would take very little to put the tall-sterned Osprey in irons or make her miss stays. Hawkwood was not happy about it. It was like mounting a normally fiery horse and finding it lame.
“Longboat on the larboard beam!” the lookout called from the foretop.
“Our tardy nobleman, at last,” Billerand muttered. “At least he will not make us miss our tide.”
“What have you heard of this Murad fellow?” Hawkwood asked him.
“Only what you already know, Captain. That he has an eye for the ladies, and is as swift as a viper with that rapier of his. A good soldier, according to his sergeants, though he’s overfond of flogging.”
“What nobleman is not?”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you, Captain. This Murad is to bring no valet on board with him. Instead he has selected a pair of girls from among the passengers as his cabin servants.”
“So?”
“I’ve heard the soldiers talking. He’ll have them as bedmates and the soldiers intend to try and follow his example. We have forty women on the carrack alone, married most of them, or someone’s daughter.”
“I hear you, Billerand. I’ll talk to him about it.”
“Good. We don’t want the mariners feeling left out. There’s enough friction as it is, and raping a sorcerer’s wife or daughter is no light matter. Why, I saw a man once—”
“I said I’d talk to him.”
“Aye, sir. Well, I’d best see to the windlass. We’ll weigh as soon as the tide is on the ebb?”
“Aye, Billerand.” Hawkwood slapped his first mate on the shoulder, and the man left the quarterdeck, sensing his captain wanted to be alone.
Or as alone as it is possible to be in a ship thirty yards long with ninescore souls on board, Hawkwood thought. He peered out towards the land and saw the longboat skimming along like a sea-snake half a mile away. Murad was standing in the stern, straight as a flagstaff. His long hair was flying free in the wind. He looked as though he were coming to lay claim to the ships and all in them.
Hawkwood moved over to the weather side of the deck, pausing to shout down through the connecting hatch to the tillerdeck below.
“Relieving tackles all shipped there?”
“Aye, sir,” a muffled voice answered. “Course west-sou’-west by north as soon as we weigh.”
The men knew their job. Hawkwood was fidgeting, anxious to get started, but they needed the ebb of the tide to help pull them out of the bay. There was a while to wait yet.
He had said his farewells, for what they were worth. He and Galliardo had drunk a bottle of good Gaderian and chewed half a dozen pellets of Kobhang so they might talk the night through. The port captain would look after his affairs while he was gone, and call in on Estrella occasionally.
Estrella. Saying farewell to her had been like ridding one’s hands of fresh pitch. She knew this was no common voyage—no coasting trip, or ordinary cruise after a prize. He could still feel her thin arms about his waist as she knelt before him, sobbing, the tears streaking kohl down her cheeks.
And then Jemilla. What was it she had said?
“I’ll look for you in the spring, Richard. I’ll look out over the harbour. I’d know that absurd carrack of yours anywhere.”
She had been naked, lying on the wide bed with her head resting on one hand, watching him with those feline eyes of hers. Her thighs had been slick with the aftermath of their loving and his back was smarting from where she had clawed him.
“Will you still be the King’s favourite when I return?” he had asked, lightly enough.
That smile of hers, infuriating him.
“Who knows? Favourites come and go. I live in the present, Richard. This time next year we could all be under the Merduks.”
“In which case you would no doubt be chief concubine in the Sultan’s harem. Still spinning your webs.”
“Oh, Richard,” she said, feigning hurt, “you wrong me.” But then her face had changed at seeing the anger on his. The dark eyes had sparked in the way that never failed to raise the hair on his nape. She opened her legs so he could see the pink flesh amid the dark fur at her crotch, and then she spread herself wide there with shining fingers so that it seemed he was looking at some carnivorous flower from the southern sultanates.
“You have your ships, your culverins, your crews. I only have this, the one weapon all women have possessed since time began. You would prate to me of love, fidelity—I can see it in your great sad eyes. You who have a wife weeping the night away at home. The sea is your real mistress, Richard Hawkwood. I am only your whore, so let me pursue the same aims in life as you, in my own way. If that means bedding every noble in the kingdom, I will do it. Soon enough my charms will be taken from me. My skin will wither and my hair will grey, while your God-cursed sea will always be there, always the same. So let me play what games I can while I can.”
He had felt like a child groping for an adult’s comprehension. It was true that he had been about to tell her that he loved her. In her own way, he thought she returned his love—if it was in her to love any man at all. And he realized that, in her own way, she hated his leaving as much as Estrella did, and resented it similarly.
They had loved again, after that. But this time there was no hectic passion; they had coupled like two people grown old together, savouring every moment. And Hawkwood had known somehow that it was the last time. Like a ship, she had slipped her cables and was drifting away, letting the wind take her further on her voyage. He had been discarded.
“Longboat alongside!” someone shouted, and there was a commotion on deck, a glittering clatter as a file of soldiers shouldered arms and Murad of Galiapeno hauled himself up the carrack’s sloping side.
Murad sketched a salute to his officers and went below without further ceremony. He had a small chest under one arm. Hawkwood saw his face as a pale, sneering flash before the lean nobleman had stepped into the companionway and disappeared.
“Sir, shall we stow the longboat on the booms?” Billerand shouted.
“No, we’ll tow her. The waist is crowded enough as it is.”
Hawkwood had a momentary, silent argument with himself, and then left the quarterdeck. He went below, following in Murad’s footsteps, and knocked on the new door the ship’s carpenter had wrought in the bulkhead next to his own.
“Come.”
He went in. At the back of his mind he was counting off the minutes before they weighed anchor, but it was best to do this now, to get it over with. Billerand would manage if he were detained.
Murad had his back to him when he entered. He was studying something on the lon
g table that spanned the cabin. He locked it away, whatever it was, in the chest he had brought aboard before turning round with a smile.
“Well, Captain. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I would have a word with you, if I may.”
“I am entirely at your disposal. Speak freely.” Murad leaned back against the table and folded his arms. Hawkwood stood awkwardly before him as though he had been summoned to the cabin. He noted with some satisfaction, however, that the nobleman was finding the slight roll and pitch of the ship awkward. He swung like a reed in a thin breeze, whereas to Richard the deck was solid and steady under his feet.
Wait until the bastard gets his first taste of seasickness, he thought malevolently.
“It is about your men. It has been brought to my attention that they seem to think they can have the pick of the women on board.”
Murad frowned. “So?”
“They cannot.”
Murad straightened, his arms coming down by his sides.
“Cannot?”
“No. There will be no women molested on my ships, not by my men and not by yours. These are not strumpets from the back alleys of Abrusio we have embarked. They are decent women, with families.”
“They are Dweomer-folk—”
“They are passengers, and thus my responsibility. I have no wish to challenge your authority with your own men, especially in public; but if I hear of a rape, I’ll give the man involved the strappado, be he seaman or soldier. I’d as lief have you order it, though. It would help relations between the services.”
Murad stared silently at Hawkwood as though he were seeing him for the first time. Then, very softly, he said:
“And I? If I choose to take a woman, Captain, will you give me the strappado?”
“Rules are different for the nobility—you know that. I cannot touch you. But I beg you to consider what such an example would do for the men. There is also the fact that the passengers are, as you have said, Dweomer-folk. They are not defenceless. I’ve no wish to have my vessel blown out of the water.”
Murad nodded curtly, as if finally accepting the justice of this. “We must get along as best we may, then,” he said pleasantly. “Perhaps your crews can persuade my men to follow their example and fuck each other’s arses as sailors are wont to do, I am told.”
Hawkwood felt the blood rising into his face and his sight darkened with fury. He bit back the words that were forming in his mouth, however, and when he spoke again his tone was as civil as Murad’s.
“There is another thing.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“The rutter. I need it if I am to plot a proper course. So far you have told me to set sail for North Cape in the Hebrionese, but after that I am wholly in the dark. That is no way for the master of a ship to be. I need the rutter.”
“Don’t you mariners ever use the proper form of address, Hawkwood?”
“I am Captain Hawkwood to you, Lord Murad. What about the rutter?”
“I cannot give it to you.” Murad held up a hand as Hawkwood was about to speak again. “But I can give you a set of sailing instructions copied out of it word for word.” He snatched up a sheaf of papers from the table behind him. “Will that suffice?”
Hawkwood hesitated. The rutter of a true seaman, an open-ocean navigator, was a rare and wonderful thing. Shipmasters guarded their rutters with their lives, and the knowledge that this ignorant landsman had in his possession such a document—and containing the details of such a voyage—was maddening. Perhaps he even had a log as well. So much information would be there, information any captain in Hebrion would give an arm for, and this ignorant swine kept it to himself where it was useless. What was he afraid that Hawkwood might see? What was out there in the west that had to be kept so secret?
He snatched the papers greedily out of Murad’s hand but forced himself not to look at them. There would be a better time. He would lay his hands on the rutter yet. He had to, if he was to be responsible for his ships.
“Thank you,” he said stiffly, stuffing the papers in his bosom as though they were of little account.
Murad nodded. “There! You see, Captain, we can work together if we’ve a mind to. Now will you sit with me and have some wine?”
They would be weighing anchor soon, but Hawkwood took a chair, feeling that the scarred nobleman had somehow outfoxed him. Murad rang a little handbell that sat on the table.
The cabin door opened and a girl’s voice said, “Yes?”
Hawkwood turned in his chair, and found himself staring at a young woman with olive-coloured skin, green eyes and a mane of tawny, shining hair that was cropped short just below her ears. She wore the breeches of a boy, and could almost have passed for one were it not for the subtle delicacy of her features and the undeniable curves of her slim figure. He saw her hand on the door handle: brown fingers with close-bitten nails. A peasant girl, then. And he remembered—she was the one the sailor had tussled with up on deck.
“Wine, Griella, if you please,” Murad drawled, his eyes drinking in the girl as he spoke. She nodded and left without another word, eyes blazing.
“Marvellous, eh, Captain? Such spirit! She hates me already, but that is only to be expected. She will grow used to me, and her comrade also. It promises to be a pleasant tussle of wills.”
The girl came in with a tray, a decanter and two glasses. She set them on the table and exited again. She met Hawkwood’s stare as she went, and her eyes made him sit very still. He was silent as Murad poured the wine. Something in the eyes was not right; it reminded Hawkwood of the mad eyes of a rabid dog, windows into some unfathomable viciousness. He thought of saying something, but then shrugged to himself. Perhaps Murad liked them that way, but he had best be wary when bedding such a one.
“Drink, Captain.” The nobleman’s normally sinister face was creased with a smile: the sight of a girl seemed to have quickened his humour. Hawkwood knew that he had called her in for a reason, to make a point. He sipped at his glass, face flat.
A good wine, perhaps the best he had ever tasted. He savoured it a moment.
“Candelarian,” Murad told him. “Laid down by my grandfather. They call it the wine of ships, for it is said that it takes a sea voyage to age it properly, a little rolling in the cask. I have half a dozen barrels below, thank the Saints.”
Hawkwood knew that. It had meant carrying six fewer casks of water. But he said nothing. He had come to realize that he could do little about the whims of the nobleman whilst Hebrion was in sight. Once they were on the open ocean, though—then it would be different.
“So tell me, Captain,” Murad went on, “why the delay? We are all aboard, everything is ready, so why do we sit at anchor? Aren’t we wasting time?”
“We are waiting for the tide to turn,” Hawkwood said patiently. “Once it reverses its flow and begins pulling out of the bay, then we’ll up anchor and have the current to aid us when we’re trying to get past the headland. A beam wind—one that hits the ship on the side—is not the best for speed. With the Osprey I’d sooner have one from the quarter, that is coming up at an angle from aft of amidships.”
Murad laughed. “What a language you sailors have among yourselves!”
“Once we clear Abrusio Head we’ll be steering a more southerly course and we’ll have that quartering wind; but it’ll be pushing us towards a lee shore so I’ll be taking the ships further out to gain sea room.”
“Surely it would be quicker to remain inshore.”
“Yes, but if the wind picks up, and with the leeway the ships make, we could find ourselves being pushed on the shore itself, embayed or run aground. A good mariner likes to have deep water under him and a few leagues of sea room to his lee.”
Murad waved a hand, growing bored. “Whatever. You are the expert in this matter.”
“When we hit the latitude of North Cape,” Hawkwood went on relentlessly, “if we sail due west we’ll have that beam wind again. Only the rutter of the Cartige
llan Faulcon’s master can tell me if we can expect to have the Hebrian trade with us out into the Western Ocean, or if we pick up a different set of winds at some point. It is important; it will dictate the length of the voyage.”
“It is there in the sheets I copied for you,” Murad said sharply. His scar rippled on his face like a pale leech.
“You may not know what should be copied and what should not. You may not have given me everything I need to navigate this enterprise with any safety.”
“Then you will have to come back to me, Captain. There will be no more discussion of the matter.”
Hawkwood was about to retort when he heard a cry beyond the cabin.
“Osprey ahoy! Ahoy the carrack there! We’ve a passenger for you. You left him behind, it seems.”
Hawkwood glanced at Murad, but the nobleman seemed as puzzled as himself. They rose as one and left the cabin, stepping along the passage to the waist of the ship. Billerand and a crowd of others were leaning over the side.
“What is it? Who is this?” Murad demanded, but Billerand ignored him.
“Seems we left someone behind, Captain. They’ve an extra passenger for us, brought out in the harbour scow.”
Hawkwood looked down the sloping ship’s side. The scow crew had hooked on to the carrack’s main chains and a figure was clambering up the side of the ship, his robe billowing in the sea breeze. He laboured over the ship’s rail and stood on deck, his tonsured head shining with effort.
