Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
‘To prove that I’m unshockable. Godscalc asked me my opinion of Nicholas.’
‘Godscalc’s dead.’
‘I still hope to give him my opinion one day. Why is Nicholas here? A cargo from Alexandria or Crete would fetch thirty times what this will profit.’
John had looked up. He said, ‘Ask Nicholas, and tell me if he answers. Officially, the returns will be rich. Unofficially, he’s hoping to tempt out and damage his rivals. Secretly, if you want my opinion, he’s running away from himself. Do you hear something?’
‘Sir!’
It was one of the watch, in a whisper.
John said, ‘We are coming.’
On deck, the muffled voice of the incoming horn was unmistakable, its direction uncertain. Slowly it grew more distinct. It was not until the vessel came close, slipping into the principal harbour, that they saw the ghostly line of its lamps, and its dimensions.
Nicholas was in a tavern with Robin at the time, concluding a deal with Crackbene and a Faroese pilot called Torolf Mohr, while fog curled through the turf roof and round the edge of the door. The contract was not for themselves. Torolf, a self-assured man with one eye, had already stuffed the ducats into his purse. ‘Any friend of Crackbene’s,’ he was repeating with casual joviality. ‘I am minding that couple you sent up to summer in Nólsoy: how the man fretted
and fumed! Three times a week he rowed over in secret to Tórshavn: the little wife never knew. But the next batch of Føroyar young, I can tell you, had a fine cross-bred kinship among them. Would that be the ship we were talking of?’
Robin jumped. Nicholas flung open the door, having crossed the matted dirt in two strides. It was a ship’s horn. He refrained from swearing. ‘It can’t be. You say they all use the main harbour?’
‘They all do. You’re safe where you are. But you’d better get your men aboard and get out. You can’t bribe the whole of Tórshavn. Whoever it is, they’ll learn that you’ve been.’
‘It can’t be helped,’ Nicholas said. Crackbene had already left. It was good news in one sense: the men would still be sober enough to rouse out. In another sense it was startlingly bad. Either his competitors knew to be early, or they were faster by far than he bargained for.
It could be dealt with. Only one vessel had come. By the time it could land a shore party, the
Svipa
could be preparing to con its way out. All the time he was helping Crackbene to scour through the huts and herd his seaman back to the ship, Nicholas was working out where the incomer could have come from.
He was answered just as he embarked on the final trip from the shore to his ship. The Faroese pilot called Torolf stood above and spoke from the wharf. The fog curled behind him.
‘Ey, Svipa!’
‘So?’ said Nicholas.
The man’s one eye beamed in the light of his lantern. ‘The ship that came in. It is the one we were speaking of.’
Damn. ‘The ship from Ireland?’ said Nicholas.
‘From Killybegs, yes. You were right. You will need me.’
‘She’s big?’
‘O,
jà!’
The Faroese grinned. Stretching one arm, he described an immense, waving line with the lantern. ‘Four hundred tons, twice your size. Its name is
Unicorn.’
Then Nicholas swore, so that the Faroese laughed out aloud. The Faroese said, ‘It is your title,
nei?’
‘Others hold it as well,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I don’t think they should have a ship to go with it. Do you?’
‘We shall see,’ said Torolf Mohr. ‘But make haste. Put to sea. Let the lad off at the skerry.
Bless’, bless’.’
Nicholas had borrowed a boy to lead them out through the channel. He signalled his oarsmen to pull, and called thanks.
‘Takk! Takk fyri!’
But Torolf had already gone.
Aboard, he found the orderly chaos of departure, and had to resist the impulse to shout. The other ship would know of his presence by
now, but Martin and Sersanders still had to revictual and take on a pilot. In this fog, they were unlikely to catch him, and probably knew it.
Even so, the
Svipa’s
progress seemed painfully slow, swaying along the fjords between shadowy cliff-faces and fingers and pinnacles, banded with mist. And when at last the wind started to come, dispersing the mist, it pranked from every side, funnelled this way and that between cliffs, so that the ship shook with the tug of her gear. Although they knew these soundings so well, the Føroyar were oarsmen, not sailors. The wind was no friend in these parts.
As arranged, they landed the boy at the end of the channel, by a grassy shelter picked out by the moon. Then they moved away, and broke out their sails, one by one.
Nicholas stood on the foredeck with John. The sea opened, a glimmer of crests in the dark. Above, the sky was broken with stars. The ship leaned and dipped to the deepening waves; its speed quickened; its uneven voice began to ease towards melody. He could feel the mood on board altering too, as resentment faded, usurped by the first tingling spark of excitement. Soon he would order up ale for all, and some food. Robin said, ‘Sir?’
Ready-witted, ever-present, ever-helpful, Robin of Berecrofts had already proved himself his father’s son; and Nicholas had rewarded him with fair, but not undue attention. Robin had his own people and, trained, would serve them in the end, not a stranger.
Nevertheless the boy had worked hard at Tórshavn and was due some return. Nicholas said, ‘What? You wanted to stay in the Faroes? The Boyds enjoyed it. Well, one of them did.’
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘That is, I know. I didn’t mind having to leave. I thought there was something you ought to be told. Martin didn’t hire your man Torolf for the
Unicorn.’
Beside them, John had spun round. The boy’s face, dripping with spray, was rather pale. Nicholas said, ‘Explain, please.’
The ship lurched. The boy staggered and recovered at once, his hands stiff at his sides like a soldier’s. He said, ‘Torolf offered, and Martin refused him. They’ve taken a pilot called Mogens Björnsen. He knows Iceland well.’
Nicholas stared at the boy, who met his eyes. He always did. So when he spoke to the lad, it was with more restraint than he felt. ‘Robin, how do you know this?’
‘I told him,’ said someone defiantly. ‘Ey.’
He thought at first it was Dmitri, stepping out from the dark of the hatch. Then he realised that the unbroken voice was not his. Finally, he recognised whose it was.
He said to John, ‘Tell the helm. We turn back.’
John, with an effort, turned his gaze from the speaker to Nicholas. ‘You’ll jeopardise the whole ship.’
‘Not if she’s rowed to the hut,’ Nicholas said. ‘She can wait with the lad until morning.’
‘No, she can’t,’ Robin said. ‘She’s risking her life as it is. Let her speak.’
‘Well, Katelijne?’ said Nicholas.
Chapter 22
F
OR MANY REASONS
, not least to do with his boyhood, Nicholas Fleury was on the surface an equable man. Of recent years he had begun, as a matter of strategy, to allow himself some show of temper; and more recently still, there had been occasions, some regrettable, where his exasperation had outstripped his control.
The debt he owed Katelijne Sersanders was a profound one. At the moment, it didn’t exist. She was here, on his ship, in jacket, tunic and hose, a woollen cap on the hair cropped from Egypt: a well-born unmarried girl of eighteen, niece to Anselm Adorne, sister to Anselm Sersanders of the powerful
Unicorn
. When Nicholas said,
‘Well, Katelijne?’
he made no effort to hide what he felt.
He saw her swallow. Then she said, ‘I am your hostage.’
The lid of the hatch was no place to pursue that. He said shortly, ‘To my cabin,’ and holding the curtain aside for the girl, closed it in the faces of Robin and John. If he knew him, Father Moriz would appear soon enough. The ship continued on its course; the girl stood facing him, her hand on the bulwark. He said, ‘Sit.’
She sat. She folded her hands where her lap should have been. She said, ‘I warned Sersanders not to hire the first man you sent him. I’m sorry. But now I’m here, they can’t attack you or your ship.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Nicholas said. He took a breath. ‘Does your brother know that you’re here?’
‘He will now. I left him a message.’
‘He knows I have the
Svipa?’
‘We heard as soon as we landed. I slipped away then, and came here.’
‘After making sure that Torolf was rejected. You think I would bribe a pilot to mislead his employer?’
‘I knew you would,’ the girl said. ‘As soon as I learned what my brother was doing. As soon as I heard you had dashed out of Edinburgh.’
‘How? You were at Dean Castle,’ he said.
‘Your wife joined us after you’d gone. My brother wrote me from Ayr. The lady Mary talked of your link with the Faroes. She hid in Nólsoy when Tom Boyd and she first fled from Scotland. Her son was conceived there. She speaks with tenderness of the idyll you made possible for her. Her summer alone with her husband.’
‘I note the vinegar,’ Nicholas said. ‘But you didn’t have to come and rebuke me in person. You had only to mention all that to your brother.’
‘But then he would have attacked you,’ she said. ‘Now he can’t.’
‘No. But I can attack him,’ Nicholas said. ‘Nothing personal, of course. But the Bank has a stake in this trade, and I plan to put another through Martin.’
She said, ‘Their ship is bigger than yours.’ She paused. ‘Don’t blame Anselm. I forced him to let me sail with him.’
‘Of course I blame him,’ Nicholas said. ‘And you. I should take you back to him.’
‘Then you would lose your ship and your men. M. le Grant was right. And after all this trouble, I wouldn’t reach Iceland. They were going to leave me till summer in Nólsoy. Nólsoy!’
‘And look what happens there,’ Nicholas said. He spoke absently. He said, ‘Kathi?’
‘Jà,’
said Katelijne. She never blinked.
‘Mother of God, don’t
do
that,’ Nicholas said. ‘Are you doing all this just because you want to go to Iceland?’
‘Of course,’ Kathi said.
Her eyes shone. She loved adventure. She loved any kind of adventure, as he ought to have remembered. Father Moriz, hauling open the door to the cabin, stopped and looked at them both. He said, ‘What are you doing? What is she doing here?’
‘We are all,’ said Nicholas, ‘going to Hell. Come and join us.’
They got there in three remarkably satisfactory days. Among the crew, it was recognised almost at once that the girl was not the padrone’s young piece, as assumed. This was made exceptionally clear by the priest, who had given his cabin to the young person. Thanks to Kathi (they used her name freely), the
Unicorn
wouldn’t harm them, and the master wouldn’t force an attack. Why the girl was doing it all was a mystery. She wasn’t sweet on either Mick or de Fleury, far less the two older men and the ‘prentice. She seemed more like a boy than a maid. Christ, did you see her run up those ropes like a squirrel?
Nicholas had her ordered down twice, before he found she was as
sure-footed as he was. She was more competitive in all things than Robin. Like Gelis, she could sense the mood of a ship, and work to keep the crew’s loyalty. But Gelis never wasted her time, as Kathi did, with ceaseless activity. Kathi did things because they occurred to her, and not with any permanent object. She was like a storekeeper filling his shelves with delicacies that instantly perished. In time, he let her race where she wanted, and sometimes competed against her. He did not always win.
He had, of course, lectured her about her foolhardiness. She was aboard, among men, with only the priest for a chaperon. The voyage was dangerous. Her reasons, however altruistic, might never be recognised or believed: she could be labelled a traitor, a spy or a hostage.
‘I know,’ she had said. ‘But you can’t put me back on the
Unicorn
now. It would be suicide. And anyway the damage is done. And further anyway, if we all survive, I can get myself back home with Sersanders, and no one will know I ever left him.’
‘You are absolutely right,’ Nicholas said. ‘I can even suggest what you might do with the two shiploads of men you are going to have to bribe to keep quiet till you’re dead. Kathi, I shall try to look after your brother, but I can’t promise the same for your uncle’s ship. Do you understand?’
The clear eyes didn’t change. He was left to review his own words, and regret them. He saw her follow his thoughts with a half-smile. She said, ‘My uncle has other things on his mind. Yes, of course I understand. Tell me your plans if you like. It won’t hurt me. Sersanders will be doing the same.’
Then, for the first time, he gave all his mind to what she had done. He said, ‘I thought you would have gone back to Bruges with your uncle and aunt.’
‘They didn’t tell me they were going,’ she said. ‘They left while I was at Dean Castle. They want me to stay in Scotland, and do well, and marry. It is right that I should do what they want. They have been a father and mother to me.’
‘But you would rather have gone.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘But Dr Andreas is there to take care of her. He will be better than anyone.’
‘So that is really why you are rushing to Iceland. I’m sorry,’ he said.
She looked up and smiled. ‘I had other reasons. No, they are right. I should marry soon.’
‘I hear there are suitors,’ he said. ‘Someone, for example, not too far from Berecrofts?’
Her smile remained, full of friendship and mischief. ‘Perhaps. My
uncle has several favourites, all kind men, and good. He says the choice may be mine.’
He thought of Gelis’s sister, forced into a loathsome Scottish betrothal and repudiating it with such violence in Bruges. The suitor was dead, and so were the parents who picked him. ‘Do you like them?’ he said. ‘Your uncle’s candidates?’
‘I’m in no hurry,’ she said. ‘But yes, I could share a house and a family with one of them. I should like to have sons like your Jordan. He enjoyed the ponies at Dean, and the country.’
‘Of course. You said Gelis came.’