Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
Father Moriz’s eyebrows vibrated, and his streaming eyes stared accusingly over the scarf wrapped about his nose and his mouth. He pinched it down and answered, if curtly. ‘There is a harbour. I understand we have people to meet.’
‘Back in Scotland?’ yelled Robin.
‘Can you not tell west from east? Yes, back in Scotland. A respite at least from the wind. Are you not glad?’
‘And then what?’
‘And then, if you insist, you will be told everything,’ said Father Moriz.
It was a tidal river they entered, full of sandbars and crowded with fishing-boats. Behind the jostling masts there stretched sheeted water and marshes; what else the masts hid was not apparent until they had dropped anchor in the deepening dusk and were promptly hailed from a skiff at their lee. The men who came aboard from her were not only strangers, but only one of them spoke a language he
knew. They were greeted by Master Crackbene, who in turn presented them to his employer.
Presented
was not the right word. They spoke to M. de Fleury as free men; as Master Crackbene did when he was forgetful or angered. And M. de Fleury, broaching the ale-keg himself, answered the strangers in kind. When Robin scrambled to help, M. de Fleury said, ‘No. We’re leaving in half an hour. Pack.’
Father Moriz was busily strapping his coffer, and the engineer’s modest bundle was ready, as was that of the sailing-master himself. Like the others, M. de Fleury had brought almost nothing: it would not take long to pack. Robin himself had more garments than anyone. He had been told what to bring. He found, heaving bags into the skiff, that he kept catching his breath with excitement. Then he was in the lighter himself, and the strangers had joined him, with M. de Fleury and the three Company men, and the dogger was already weighing anchor, ready to sail off without them.
He sat and watched it diminish until its lamp splintered and shrank among the rigging and masts of the fishing-boats. Then something heavy and dark took its place. A dam gate. A mill-house. A castle. A ship without lights, with water chuckling around its curved sides, and three towering masts stroking the stars. A caravel of two hundred tons, hidden here. A glimmer showed him the name. It was a strange one: the
Svipa
.
Someone spoke; someone answered. A ladder came down in the dark and Master Crackbene climbed up it, followed by all the Company men. He was last. He looked over his shoulder and saw that all the strangers were coming aboard too, with their luggage. He stepped into the waist of the ship, and Father Moriz took his arm and steered him aft to where the poop castle should be, and the cabins. A curtain moved, and he was pushed forward into a chamber whose swinging lamp dazzled him.
Shaking hands with M. de Fleury inside was a man with a cynical face and a bundle of frizzled black pelt on his crown which turned out to be hair. ‘Eric Mowat,’ said M. de Fleury, introducing him. ‘Our agent in Denmark and Bergen. All went well?’
‘Never better,’ said the black-haired man, greeting each of them. ‘Not a wheesht has got out. Ye’ll be first at the hallost, never doubt it. Aye, the laddie. Ye’ll need some guid sturdy claidin’ for this one.’
Robin saw he was being addressed. He gave an agreeable smile and cast a hopeful glance at M. de Fleury, who sighed.
‘I promised to tell you.’
‘Can I guess?’ Robin said. ‘The Danzig ship arrived after all, and you hid it.’ Everyone smiled, which was what you risked when you made guesses.
M. de Fleury said, ‘She would have been seen passing through from the Baltic. Besides, this ship isn’t new.’
Now Robin looked about, that was obvious. He said, ‘But she’s beautiful.’
‘She should be,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘A two-year-old two-hundred-ton ship with a caravel hull, built from the finest imported wood and hemp cordage for a Bristol consortium of merchants. Since they were trading mainly in other folks’ goods, no one objected when Crackbene restrained them. He freed the seamen, returned the cargo to its proper owners and ransomed the merchants, retaining the ship for our trouble. Crackbene brought it to Montrose before Christmas.’
It was piracy. It was double piracy. It was wonderful. Robin said buoyantly, ‘To sweep the herring grounds before the Hanse boats trouble to get there!’ He had to shout, against the sound of running feet and calls and clanking outside. The ship trembled.
M. de Fleury said, ‘I’m glad it seems like that. Someone will tell you the rest. John, outside if you will. Moriz, Master Mowat will show where our gear is. Robin, stay out of the way. I want to get out on this tide.’
‘Get out where? To fish?’ Robin said. ‘To stay ahead of the ships from the Baltic?’ He followed him out of the cabin and gazed. Where all had been darkness, now the estuary was filled with small lights, bobbing as the fishing-boats opened their ranks. The moon laddered the sea where they’d been.
M. de Fleury had gone. It was the red-haired engineer who glanced over his shoulder. The engineer said, ‘He’d no business bringing you.’
Robin stopped. The chaplain said, ‘His father allowed it.’
‘To fish for herring,’ said Master le Grant. ‘Can you see Nicholas fishing for herring?’
‘Then
what?’
Robin yelped, forgetting his manners.
Father Moriz took him back to the cabin. Mowat went out. The chaplain sat, and drew Robin down with him. The chaplain said, ‘You are bright, but that is a man of exceptional cunning. Don’t think shame you can’t match him. It is true that the Baltic ships don’t know we are here. Neither does Anselm Adorne.’
‘Anselm Adorne!
But he’s going home to Bruges.’
‘He couldn’t stay because of his wife. But he has a ship. His nephew Sersanders is going to be with it. And so is Martin their partner, the agent of the Vatachino our rivals. Their vessel is hidden as we are, to keep out of sight of the Hanse.’
Robin was silent. Then he said, ‘Sersanders doesn’t know we are here.’
‘No.’ The priest waited; then said, ‘It was Anselm Adorne who arranged to delay the Bank’s new ship in Danzig. Nicholas would have done the same. There is a rivalry between the two men.’
‘I wouldn’t have told anyone,’ Robin said. Then he said, ‘Are we going to fight the other ship?’
Father Moriz patted his shoulder and leaned back. ‘Not if all goes according to plan. We are making for the same markets, that’s all. And he is off the west coast, and better positioned to reach them than we are. But he has no idea he should leave quite so soon.’
The same markets for what? Frowning at the jolting black hide of the curtain, Robin tried to recall what he had glimpsed in the hold. He had seen sleeping animals penned, and stout boxes, and signs of considerable provisions. He had seen barrels of salt, and bales with coquet seals on them. He had seen casks of water and boxes of fish-hooks – boxes with hundreds of fish-hooks. And he had observed, in swathes and coils and bundles, more fishing-lines than he had ever seen at one time in his life.
He said slowly, ‘But we aren’t going for herring.’
‘No,’ said Father Moriz. ‘We aim higher than that. We aim to serve Christendom – which has, you may have noticed, one hundred and sixty-six fast days per year, forty of them in Lent – with a fish that is greater than herring; that will endure without salting; that will transport to every clime, while exacting the highest of prices. We are going to fetch stockfish.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Robin. He was sorry for the priest, who had spoken so bitterly; he did not understand why.
‘It is not your fault,’ said Father Moriz, recovering. ‘I cannot say I approve, but I would rather be here to influence what occurs if I can. You understand this is a field of great competition, where rights are already pre-empted and disputes are not taken to court, but settled at sea. We shall be away for some time.’
Robin thought of the great northern sea, washing Denmark and Norway her vassal; embracing England and Scotland, truculent neighbours; surrounding the islands of Orkney and Shetland, so recently Danish. He said, ‘Stockfish are cod. Stockfish are cod, caught and dried by the sun and the wind.’
‘So I believe,’ the priest said. ‘And so, with a warehouse in Leith, a boy will know what an old man from Augsburg had to be told: that the cod is a creature of habit, and will come at a certain time every year – at this time, as the year turns to March – to the place where it best likes to fatten and breed. And there, well before the spawn can begin, and during the weeks of rich feeding, when they are at their ripest and heaviest, men will gather and catch them. And you will
perhaps know that of all the known world, there is one favoured spot where they come, and where all those hunting them will come also.’
‘The Westmann Islands,’ said Robin. He thought the priest was teaching him some lesson. Then he saw he was not.
‘We are going to the Westmann Isles,’ said Father Moriz. ‘We are going to tamper with Nature, defy law and cheat pirates. We are going to multiply fish for the Lord. We are going to sail the stiffening ocean to Iceland.’
As he spoke the anchor-chain rattled. The squeak of the windlass had ceased; the tow ropes took up the strain. The
Svipa
slowly came into motion, swaying through the long sandy channel that would take her to sea. The priest rose and went out. Robin stood at the door, silent with shock. The Mouth of Hell was in Iceland. He had heard mariners talk. You could see the column of smoke from the mountain when you could see nothing else. Smoke and fire rising straight from the sea.
He thought of the deep shell of the ship, packed already with clothing and provender; the food and water and ale, the livestock and the well-equipped cook-room; the fish-hooks, baskets and lines that were to feed them on their long stormy journey, and then make them rich, if they lived. He thought of the other shapes he had seen, which were cannon.
In the last week of February, when his father had been at sea for a day, Jordan de Fleury left his house and his toys in the High Street and travelled with his nurses and mother to Dean, a little south of the new hall of Beltrees.
He bore the journey quite well, despite the cold and the wind, since Oliver Semple, who led them, had lodged his party sensibly between simple stages, and since the boy had his mother’s especial attention. No mother, naturally, was perfect, but the lady Gelis paid strict attention to her child’s care, and spent time in his company. She spent less time, as was natural, when her husband was at hand to distract her, and now might seem to be repairing the omission. Or she might be reassuring herself of the child’s affection. Parents could become jealous, at times, of each other. They could become jealous of the child’s nurse.
Mistress Clémence, alive to such dangers, had averted them. The present threat was not to her authority but to her job. Although Dean Castle was no longer hers but the Queen’s, the Princess Mary was lodged there with her children. With her fractious Boyd children, who had responded so well to Jordan’s nurses. Mistress Clémence wondered whether, if it came to a tussle, the royal household would accept Pasque as a servant for Jamie and Margaret. She feared not.
Gelis herself took profound pleasure in the ride. Brought up to the dunes and slades and wide skies of Zeeland, she preferred the bracing shores of the east, but the softer valleys and moors she now entered had been home to her when she had served the young Mary, and she was pleased to be back, even so close to Kilmirren. She shut her mind much more easily now to the recollection of what she had done there. Her sister Katelina had seduced her future husband for a purpose, and so had she. She despised Simon.
No, she could dismiss that charmless small episode. It was over, and it had led to success. In all but a few minor instances, Nicholas had acted as she had expected and planned. She knew him. However skilful you were, if you had no real objective in life, you would lose. She was filled, as she rode, with exultation dimmed by an ache she did not want to identify; but which made her think, unexpectedly, of her father. In any case, Nicholas would be back soon enough; and would find her at Beltrees.
North of Dean, and close to the house of Kilmirren, which was empty, Bel of Cuthilgurdy heard of Jordan’s arrival at the Castle. Indeed, Oliver Semple was the first to ride over and tell her of it. He added, ‘The woman says she’s going to Beltrees. I can’t stop her.’
‘Why should you?’ said Bel. She had made a point of cultivating the de Fleury factor, and had acted as his confidante and friend when awkward decisions fell to be made about furnishing Beltrees. When he had raised the question of expense, for example, she had always invited him airily to place the blame for this bed or that plate on her shoulders. A family man, and well connected to others of substance, Oliver Semple had said plainly enough that he had never seen silver-gilt of such weight in a laird’s house: was she trying to ruin the fellow? He knew she had strong views about Master Nicholas de Fleury, Knight of the Unicorn. She did not tell him that, on matters other than furnishing, she might occasionally choose to do what Nicholas de Fleury asked of her.
So now she said, ‘If you’re worried, why not let me take the blame of her visit? The lady can come and stay here. If she wants an expedition to Beltrees, she can have it.’
‘She wants to lodge there,’ Oliver said. ‘It’s not seemly. Unless of course you’d fancy keeping her company. We’d need a day to redd it and warm it and get childer to cook and to serve.’
‘You do that,’ said Bel. ‘I’ll invite her.’
After he had gone, she sat and stared at the fire for a long time; then she heaved herself up and went to hold a council of war in the kitchen. The house was accustomed to visitors. But this time she
liked to think there might be a wee knave and his nurses to care for. A wee laddie with dimples called Jordan whose sorry motherless sibling was far away now.
When Nicholas failed to arrive at Dean Castle, Gelis set out to move, as she had intended, to Beltrees. She also decided to accept Mistress Bel’s proffered company. It might, if nothing else, even the balance. After all, Nicholas had taken the chance to put his side of the case. Gelis ought to be surprised that Bel even wanted to see her.