Act of Mercy sf-8

by Peter Tremayne

  ‘If you are going on deck, Fidelma, I will join you,’ Cian called after her, rising to follow.

  ‘I am going to my cabin,’ Fidelma replied shortly, making it clear that she had no wish to speak with him. She knew that it was a silly attitude to take, for sooner or later she would have to confront the situation.

  ‘Then I will walk with you,’ Cian responded, unabashed by her obvious rebuke.

  Fidelma moved on hurriedly to the companionway and climbed up to the main deck. Cian caught up with her and laid a hand on her arm. She automatically snatched it away, glancing round to ensure that they were unobserved.

  Cian let out a low, derisive chuckle.

  ‘You cannot escape me for ever, Fidelma,’ he said in the cynical tone she remembered so well.

  Fidelma met his eyes a moment and then dropped her gaze. She was still unsure of herself.

  ‘Escape?’ she countered defensively. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

  ‘Perhaps you are still nursing a resentment at the way our affair ended?’

  Fidelma knew that a high colour had come to her cheeks. His mocking barb stung deeply.

  ‘I put the matter out of my mind years ago,’ she lied.

  Cian’s grin of cynicism broadened.

  ‘I can tell by your reactions that you did not. I see hatred in your eyes. There can be no hatred without love. It is the same meal. Anyway, we were young then. Youth makes a lot of mistakes. ’

  Fidelma now raised her head to meet his gaze, astonished by his calm assurance. She found her anger welling.

  ‘Are you attributing your callous behaviour simply to your youth?’ she demanded.

  Cian was almost patronising. ‘There, now,’ he countered. ‘And I thought that you had put the matter out of your mind.’

  ‘So I had, but you apparently have a wish to raise it,’ she replied. ‘If that is so, then do not expect me to agree with any justification which you wish to put forward for your behaviour. I didn’t accept it then, I won’t accept it now.’

  Cian raised an eyebrow. ‘Justification? Do I need justification?’

  Fidelma felt a hot surge of anger well in her again, along with an overwhelming desire to hit his smiling face as hard as she could. She fought against the impulse. It would have gained her nothing.

  ‘So, you feel that you do not need to justify your behaviour?’

  ‘One doesn’t need justification for the follies of one’s youth.’

  ‘A youthful folly?’ There was a dangerous glint in Fidelma’s eyes. ‘Is that how you saw our relationship?’

  ‘Not our relationship. Merely the way it ended. What else? Come on, Fidelma; we are adults now and wiser. Let the past be the past. Let us not be enemies. There is no need. We do not want enmity between us on this journey.’

  ‘There is no enmity between us. There is nothing between us,’ replied Fidelma coldly.

  ‘Come.’ Cian was almost cajoling. ‘We can be friends again as we were at first in Tara.’

  ‘Never as we were at Tara!’ she shuddered. ‘I have no wish to talk with you. You were arrogant and insufferable in your youth, and it seems that you have not altered as you have aged in years.’

  She turned swiftly on her heel and walked rapidly away towards her cabin before he had a chance to respond.

  Arrogant and insufferable. Yet the words seemed mild compared to the rage that she had felt, the humiliation, the mortification she had suffered during those lonely days waiting for him as she sat in the room she had hired in the small tavern near Tara after she had been expelled from the college of the Brehon Morann. She had moved out of the college hostel after her talk with Brehon Morann. Only Grian knew the truth of the matter, for Fidelma did not even let her family know what had happened. She became a recluse within her tiny room and, apart from Grian, she isolated herself from her family and friends.

  Cian came and went as he pleased. Sometimes she did not see him for several days, even as long as a week or more. Other times he appeared and stayed a day or two. One afternoon, they were lyingtogether in her room when Fidelma raised the question of marriage. She had sacrificed her studies for Cian, and knew that the situation into which she had been precipitated could not continue.

  She had turned to Cian, as they lay together, and demanded: ‘Will you love me for ever?’

  Cian smiled down at her. Always that same, slightly cynical smile.

  ‘For ever is a long time. Let us live while we live.’

  But Fidelma was serious. ‘You really believe that we should think only of the present? That is no way to plan a life of fulfilment and contentment.’

  ‘We exist only in the present.’

  It was the first time she had ever heard Cian express something approaching a philosophy of life. She disagreed adamantly.

  ‘We may exist in the present but we have a responsibility to the future. I have completed three years of study and was about to achieve the degree of Sruth do Aill this year, which meant that I would be qualified to be a teacher, possibly a minor teacher at my cousin’s College of Durrow. Perhaps I could find another college where I could finish that degree. We could get married then.’

  Cian rolled over on his side, away from her, and reached out to find the goblet of wine. He took a long draught from it and sighed softly.

  ‘Fidelma, you are always dreaming. Your head is always in your books. For what purpose? You are too intellectual.’ He made it sound like a dirty word. ‘Get rid of your books. You do not need them.’

  ‘Get rid of …?’ She was astonished and words left her.

  ‘Books are not for the likes of you and me. They destroy happiness, they destroy life.’

  ‘You can’t mean that,’ protested Fidelma.

  Cian shrugged indifferently. ‘It’s what I think. They give false dreams to people, make them have visions of a future which cannot be, or a past that never was. Anyway, soon I shall be returning to Tir Eoghain with my company of warriors, in the service of Cellach the High King. I will not have time to think of such matters as marriage, far less the ability to settle down. I thought you understood that from the outset. I am not a person who can be possessed or tied down.’

  Fidelma sat up abruptly in the bed, feeling cold inside.

  ‘I do not want to possess you, Cian. My intention was to go into the future with you. I thought … I thought we shared something.’

  Cian laughed in amusement.

  ‘Of course we share something. Let us enjoy that which we do share. As for the rest — have you not heard the couplet? Wedlock, Padlock.’

  ‘How can you be so cruel?’ She was aghast.

  ‘Is it cruel to be realistic?’ he demanded.

  ‘I swear, Cian, I do not know where I stand with you.’

  He smiled mockingly.

  ‘Surely, I cannot make it plainer?’

  She did not believe his cruelty. She did not believe the words he had spoken. She did not want to believe. It was merely an act he put on, she told herself — an immature act. He did love her. They would be together. She knew that. She was still possessed of a youthful vanity which refused to admit that her feelings were not based on sound judgement. So their meetings continued as and when Cian felt inclined that they should.

  Fidelma found herself leaning on the rail of the ship on the small bow deck, gazing out onto the limitless expanse of the ocean before them. She was not aware of how she came to be there, so immersed in her memories had she been.

  She was startled by a hand falling on her shoulder.

  ‘Muirgel?’ It was a low, masculine voice.

  She turned enquiringly.

  A young religieux stood there. He was in his mid-twenties, she estimated quickly. The wind caught at his wispy brown hair. He had a flushed, boyish-looking face, freckled, with dark brown eyes. His eyes widened with consternation as she turned.

  ‘I thought you … sorry,’ he mumbled awkwardly. ‘I was looking for Sister Muirgel. You had your back turned and
I thought — well …’

  Fidelma decided to put the young monk out of his embarrassment.

  ‘It is of no matter, Brother. The last I saw of Sister Muirgel was below. I believe she has seasickness and is indisposed. My name is Fidelma. I have not seen you before, have I?’

  The young man jerked his head in an awkward, formal bow.

  ‘I am Brother Bairne of Moville. I am sorry to have disturbed your thoughts, Sister.’

  ‘Perhaps they needed disturbing,’ murmured Fidelma.

  ‘What?’ Brother Bairne was taken off-guard.

  ‘It is of no significance,’ she replied. ‘I was just musing. Are you well now?’

  A frown crossed his brow. ‘Well?’ he echoed.

  ‘I understood that you did not join us for the midday meal because you also had a sickness.’

  ‘Oh — oh, yes. I was feeling queasy but I am better now, though I do not think I am recovered enough to eat anything as yet.’ He grimaced ruefully.

  ‘Well, you are not alone in that.’

  ‘Is Sister Muirgel still in her cabin?’

  ‘I presume so.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’ And Brother Bairne scurried along the deck towards the stern, terminating the exchange in a manner bordering on rudeness.

  Fidelma gazed after him and gave a mental shrug. She had hoped that her first impressions of her fellow pilgrims would prove wrong. At the moment she felt that she had more in common with Murchad and his crew than with her travelling companions. Had she been able to look into the future and learn that Cian was to be aboard, she would never have set foot on The Barnacle Goose.

  Fidelma suppressed a shiver; the wind was growing chilly. It had increased its force to that of a strong breeze, cracking the sails like the sound of a stockwhip. She was forced to push her flailing hair from her eyes.

  ‘Breezy, eh?’

  She turned towards the young speaker. Wenbrit was passing with a leather bucket in his hand and he greeted her with a grin.

  ‘There is quite a wind getting up,’ she replied.

  The cabin boy came over to her side.

  ‘I think we are in for a real blow soon,’ he confided. ‘It will sort out the sailors among the pilgrims.’

  ‘How do you know that we are in for bad weather?’ asked Fidelma, hazarding a guess that the term ‘blow’ meant there was a storm brewing.

  Wenbrit merely inclined his head towards the mainsail and, following his glance, she noticed the power of the wind which was filling and cracking it. The boy then touched her lightly on the arm and pointed towards the north-west. Fidelma turned and saw what he was indicating. Across the darkening waters there were black banks of cloud moving rapidly towards them. As she examined them, so it seemed, the clouds were tumbling over each other in a mad rush to be first to reach the ship.

  ‘A storm? Is it dangerous?’

  Wenbrit pursed his lips indifferently.

  ‘All storms are dangerous,’ he shrugged, as if the darkening sky was of little matter to him.

  ‘What can we do?’ Fidelma was awed by the menacing spectacle advancing down upon them. The boy looked at her for a moment and then seemed to relent; he became reassuring.

  ‘Murchad will run before it as it is blowing in the direction we wish to go. However, for comfort’s sake you had best go to your cabin, lady. I suppose that I’d better go below to warn the others to keep to their cabins. The wind will have risen to a gale within the hour, I’m thinking. Make sure that you have stowed away anything which is loose and could tumble around the cabin and hurt you.’

  In spite of herself, in spite of having journeyed several times by sea, Fidelma felt a quickening of her heart and an increase in the rapidity of her breathing as she went below to her cabin.

  It was almost exactly as Wenbrit predicted. The wind continued to rise and the sea’s surface turned into a foam. The ship began to rock and heave as if it were an object caught in the maw of some gigantic dog which shook and worried it. Fidelma had, as Wenbrit instructed, made sure that everything was secured in her cabin. Then she sat and waited for the oncoming tempest. Even with Wenbrit’s warning, she was unprepared for the violence with which it struck the ship. At one point, she heaved herself across the cabin to the window to look nervously through it onto the main deck. But outside was almost dark, the daylight eclipsed by the black rainclouds.

  Above the sound of the howling winds, she heard a knock and her cabin door opened. She swung round, still clinging to the support of the windowframe, to see Wenbrit balancing himself within the doorframe. He looked around, noticed everything was put away and gave her an approving smile.

  ‘I am just checking that all is well with you, lady,’ he explained. He seemed very calm in the face of the onslaught of nature. ‘Is everything all right with you?’

  ‘As right as it can be,’ Fidelma replied, turning and finding herself almost running back to her bunk, precipitated by the incline of the deck.

  ‘The storm is here,’ Wenbrit announced unnecessarily. ‘It’s stronger than the captain anticipated and he is trying to lie head to wind now but there is a heavy sea running. We shall be in for a rough time so please remain here. It is dangerous to move about unless you are used to storms at sea. I’ll bring some food later. I don’t think anyone will be sitting down for a meal.’

  ‘Thank you, Wenbrit. You are very considerate. I have a feeling we will dispense with food while this storm lasts.’

  The boy hesitated in her cabin door. ‘If there is anything you need, just pass the word for me.’

  Fidelma interpreted this quaint phrase as meaning that she should send for him. She shook her head.

  ‘It’s all right. If I need anything, I’ll just come and find you.’

  ‘No.’ The boy was vehement. ‘Remain in your cabin during the storm. Pass the word to a seaman and do not venture out on deck. Even we seamen wear lifelines on deck during a blow like this.’

  ‘I will remember,’ she assured him.

  The boy raised his knuckles to his forehead in that curious seaman’s salute and disappeared.

  She realised how cold and dark it had become yet it was only early evening. There was nothing to do but to sit on her bunk and wrap a blanket over her shoulders. It was too dark even to attempt to read. She wished she had someone to talk to. She found the ship’s cat curled up on her bunk and took comfort from his warm black furry body. She reached out a hand and stroked his head. He raised it, blinked sleepily and gazed at her, letting out a soft rumbling purr.

  ‘I guess you are used to this sort of weather, eh, Mouse Lord?’ she said.

  The cat lowered his head, yawned hugely and returned to his sleep.

  ‘You are not much of a conversationalist,’ Fidelma reproached him. And then she lay down with the cat beside her, trying to shut out the sounds of the agonised wailing of the wind through the rigging and sails and the heaving of the sea. She absently scratched the cat behind the ear and his purr intensified. Out of nowhere, the old proverb suddenly came into her mind: Cats, like men, are flatterers.

  She was thinking of Cian again.

  When Fidelma came awake on her bunk, the wind was still whining and roaring and the ship continued to be tossed this way and that. The cat remained warm and comfortable at her side. If only she had trusted her friend Grian; listened to her warnings about Cian’s shallow nature. For years she had been bitter and resentful. Then, out of nowhere, the thought occurred to her that this resentment and bitterness was not, as she had previously thought, directed at Cian. It was directed at herself. Fidelma had been angry with herself, had blamed herself for her stupidity and her silly vanity.

  Now she could hear the wind rising, moaning through the riggingand launching itself against the sails. A distant voice was shouting faintly somewhere. She could feel the ship rise as it climbed each wave and then fall as it slid into the heaving waters beneath.

  She swung off the bunk leaving Mouse Lord still curled up in a ball, fast asleep, and
apparently oblivious to the tempest. By gripping whatever hand-holds she could find, Fidelma manoeuvred herself to the window. Drawing back the sodden linen curtain, she peered out onto the deck. A fine sea spray immediately hit her in the face. She blinked and raised one hand to wipe her eyes, stumbling a little as the deck pitched beneath her. It was dark outside. Evening had passed into night. She looked upwards but there was no sign of moon nor stars. They must be covered by clouds, low and rainladen.

  The wind was now a whine through the shrouds and beyond the wooden rail she could just see, by their whiteness, the tops of the waves, being whipped into a froth of white lather by the angry buffets of air. She realised that the bow, where her cabin was situated, must be rising high into the waves as cascades of water pounded on the deck above her.

  Dark shadows were heaving on ropes around the main mast. Fidelma was astonished as she watched the silhouettes of men braving the uncontrollable winds, the bucking of the ship and the torrential waters, to lower the big mainsail. A heavy sea suddenly heaved the vessel over almost on its side. Fidelma was flung without warning against one of the walls of the cabin, but she held on and grabbed at the rim of the window, regaining her balance. Another flood of water smashed over the decks and for a moment Fidelma thought the sailors had been washed overboard but, as the spray cleared, she could see them re-emerge from the deluge still hanging onto their ropes.

  Once again she had to grasp at the grating of the window to maintain her balance when the ship lurched. She felt an almost overwhelming sense of helplessness. She wanted to run out on deck, help the men or simply do something. She felt so inadequate against the forces of nature of which she knew nothing. However, she realised that there was nothing she could do. The sailors were trained and knew the ways of the sea. She did not. All she could do was return to her bunk and hope the ship would ride out the storm.

  As she drew the linen curtain across again and began to haul her way back to her bunk, the cry came clearly: ‘All hands! All hands!’

  It was a fearful call. Panic seized her and she turned for her cabin door and heaved it open.