Gisborne: Book of Pawns (17 page)

I flew up the plank, the captain grabbing me.

‘Here Mistress, hide in amongst
the hogsheads with Master Guy.
The
baron’s men are approaching.’

He pushed me down amongst oaken hogs
and a sail was pulled across.

‘Jack,’ he called
. ‘Cast off! Piotr, cast the stern line. Ailric, pull up the plank. Ready oars.’

T
he oars were pus
hed out on the starboard side with a woody clatter.

‘Pull!’

The vessel juddered slightly as
it moved away from the wharf. Then the larboard oars pulled to gain us distance from the wharf.

‘Ready all
oa
rs… and together, pull!’

The movement changed to a steadier forward motion
and I whispered to Gisborne.

‘Are we safe?’

‘Ssh!’

He
bent and looked underneath the sail and I joined him.

‘You there, Captain!’

De Courcey
’s men
lined the wharf in their death and blood
colours and
De Courcey
himself stood in front,
his chest puffed out as he called
, expecting our captain to spring to
his
attention.

‘Aye
?’ was the shouted reply.

‘H
ave you two passengers aboard?
A man and a woman?’

‘Do I look as if I take paying passengers?’

The wily captain spat over the side of the vessel toward the wharf and one could be forgiven for thinking he spat at De Courcey.

‘But I see’d ‘em,’ he said craftily. ‘
They come aboard a half hour back and a
sked for passage up the coast.
Had to tell ‘em I wa
s bound for England, not Bruges.
’

De Courcey
swore and I made fists in silent exultation.

‘Hold the boat steady
, men,’ the captain continued before directing his attention at De Courcey again. ‘I’ll tell you what I told ‘
em.’

The boat drifted parallel with the quay but mercifully far enough away to prevent even the most intrepid of
De Courcey’s men from jumping aboard. De Courcey
paced along with us, keeping within earshot,
pushing people out of the way.
A young boy balanced on the edge of the wharf and but for kind hands that reached for him, would have pitched into the dark depths below.

‘
I sent ‘em
to the other wharf,’ said the c
aptain lifting his shoulder to indicate a direction to the stern of the
Marolingian
. ‘There’s a boat there,
a sister ship. She’s goin’
to Ter Streep and I told ‘em they could get a barge up the Zwynn to Bruges from there.’

De Courcey swore and Guy snorted softly.

I looked back f
rom under the sail and saw the c
aptain touch
his forehead with two fingers. De Courcey
had flush
ed red and turned on his heel.
He was a good enough looking
man in a ruddy, explosive way.
His chin was strong and cleft and his hair, that curious
wine
shade, lifted in t
he seabreeze as he turned, his heavy cloak flapping about him. He wasn’t
as tall as Gisborne but he had a breadth of shoulder that gave him an il
lusion of extraordinary power.
Men backed away from h
im as he hurried back to his troupe
and I would forever be rem
inded of a king in the making.

Or a kingmaker.

‘Oarsmen, pull!’ the c
aptain roared and
De Courcey looked back over his shoulder. We turned to l
arboard a little more and then the oarsmen pulled us out into the current and we floated swiftly on the tide, wel
l out of view of the quay.

‘Right you two, we need the sail now, keep your heads down until we are well
to sea
.’

‘Thank you, Davey.’

Gisborne reached up and shook the c
aptain’s hand.

‘Pleasure, Master Guy.
Yer know I do it fer Lady Ghislaine.
She were good
to me when I were at Gisborne
.’

The sail was quickly rigged and hoisted by the crew and for the fir
st time for weeks I felt safe. Out in the middle of the sea between England and Normandy
no one could tou
ch me. Not my father
nor
De Courcey. Not even that carbuncle, Halsham.
The sea purled under the bow of the
nef,
s
eabirds wheel
ed above us and the sun shone. Standing at the gunwhales, staring toward England’s shores, Gisborne’s hand slid over mine.
He gave a small squeeze, sub
tle and almost invisible, but a support nevertheless
.

‘Are you afraid?’ he asked.

‘A little,’ I admitt
ed.
‘
De Courcey
looks like a man
who is used to getting what he wants.

In truth, whilst I did feel safe here on the
Marolingian
, I was afraid of home.
Part of me wanted to flee w
est when we arrived in England …
head to the wilds o
f Wales.
But I thought of
Cecilia
and what she had done by sending
Gisborne
to find me, to warn me of my father’s parlous
state, of Moncrieff’s decline. There was part of me that felt
I at least
owed her thanks and in person.
Otherwise I would n
ot be the person she remembered.

As for my fath
er?

I was confused. If I was a daughter worthy of my mother,
I had a duty to see him
… but my feelin
gs toward him were as ambivalent a
s his no
doubt had been toward me. W
hy
else
would he have allowed Moncrieff to slide so badly that
De Courcey
was able to pick its bones?
But more than anything, I wanted and
needed
to see my mother’s tomb, to say my own farewells. My mother had been my love and it was inconceivable that I should run from the respect she was owed.

‘I would that you continue
d to view him with caution,’ Gisborne
said in response to my comment on
De Courcey.
‘He certainly wouldn’t have
your
best interests at heart.’

For a while, we just watched the shipboard activity, the men working as a well-oiled team, the sail now bellying, oars shipped,
the cry of sea birds overhead.
When I was a little girl, I used to revel in these journeys and the crews with whom we sailed were al
ways kind and patient with me.

They told me tales of merrows and mermaids and I would claim to be a mermaid m
yself, or a descendant of one. I was afraid of nothing.
Not the sea when it turned black as pi
tch in the middle deeps of this c
hannel, nor when it sharpened its teeth in a gale and gnawed at the sides of the vessels in which we
sailed.

The crews would tell me stories and my favourite was the one about the selkie, a lithe creature who shap
e-changed into a divine woman.
A fisherman captured her when she sat on the shore one day as a wom
an and he hid her selkie’s skin
which meant she
could never return to the sea.
She was at his mercy, living a grief-stricken life on land, spending hours standing on the shore, the waves washing away her tears, the wind tearing at her unfettered hair, pulling at her, saying ‘Come back, come back
to where you belong.’

As with most tales, the ending was bittersweet, t
he fisherman finally giving
the skin back s
o she could return to her home.
But he tried to follow her and inevitably drowned, which is why, said the sailors, that all shipboard men beware the beauties of the sea.

Such were the tales that filled my voyages.

And now I had different tales I wished to
be told and touched Gisborne’s arm.

‘What is the connecti
on between you and Halsham? No, p
lease
don’t turn away,’ I said as he readied himself to walk off. 
‘You
have some sort of history
or you and he wouldn’t have been so
… tolerant of each other shall we
say, over these last few weeks.
You let him go when he threate
ned me with rape. You could by rights have killed him!
And when you nicked his throat with the knife
he
could have called for help and h
ad you arrested but he didn’t.
And when I said he’d betrayed us earlier, you didn’t disagree and yet…’

‘And yet?’

He looked toward the horizon, away from my scrutiny.

‘And yet. Yes. Exactly.’

My God, I felt he should have sworn an oath to call the snake out over it.

‘
Halsham
is…’

‘Yes?’

Guy kept looking
away as he gave me his answer.

‘Halsham is my cousin.
His mother and mine were sisters.’

Chapter
Seven

Cousins
? He jests!

Whatever he had been going to answer, this was no
t what I had expected to hear.
I thought of
Halsham
the first
time I had met him in Le Mans.
A man whose manner had stood the hairs on my neck and who bowed over my hand with a look as licentious an
d assessing as it was cunning.

'But he lo
oks nothing like you,' I said.

I recalled him standing next to Gi
sborne in that cobbled street.
He had none of Guy's angularity
, nor the breadth of shoulder.
Why, the man was quite ordinar
y.
Any semblance of strength was an illusion b
r
ought on by the cut of his
surcoat with the insignia of the
Free Lancers.

And his colouring. Where were the fin
e skin tones that Gisborne might have inherited from his mother?
The
midnight hair, pale skin
and eyes the colour of
the sea? Halsham
's colouring w
as as flesh-toned as a babe's.
His t
hinning hair was a mottled brown
that would no doubt fade to nothing
if he could hold on to it.

'No,' said Guy, contin
uing to stare across the decks.
'And yet he is the child of my mother's si
ster.'

The sea hissed along the sides of the vessel as though
it mocked this odd revelation.
Abo
ve us a seabird cried out
to underline the ocean's reje
ction of this claim of kinship.
The sun had become lost behind a drifting grey cloud and I shivered slightly in the damp.

'Wh
at were the two sisters like?'

I felt that anything I could gle
an from Gisborne was to my benefit.
Such things as hair lifting on my nec
k didn't happen without reason.

'My mother was…
' he stopped and
shifted his position, ill at ease.

I
laid my hand
on his sleeve b
ut he barely reacted, choosing to continue with his gaze resting on a
far-off memory on the horizon.

'My mother was a beauty; d
ark, elegant
–
with piercing blue eyes tha
t people used to say were fey.
As though she could have
come from the mists of some strange, enchanted isle. My A
unt Marie-Ann
e
was
shorter and equally as dark,
but her hair curled wildly whilst my lady mother's was straight
. M
y aunt's eyes were green.'