Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
The lookout saw it, and let out a shout. The word passed from side to side and down to the boat, where Mogens stopped rowing and started to turn. Then the lookout bellowed again, causing Martin to hammer his fist in delight on the rail. The ship they were looking at was not the
Pruss Maiden
, it was de Fleury’s. The
Pruss Maiden
had gone, perhaps without ever sighting the other. De Fleury’s ship was intact, or so it would seem from the way it was riding. Its men would be fresh. But the
Svipa
was half his own size. There were no laws and no codes among pirates. The Banco di Niccolò’s vessel was his. Together, of course, with all the fish it had caught in the meantime.
Everyone knew they had a prize in the offing. The Cologner smiled. Svartecop looked over for orders; already the excitement had spread through the ship. Mogens, from below in the sea, was calling in Faroese, and the master, handing over the helm, began to bellow instructions. He stopped. The fellow Sersanders, standing up in the skiff, had raised his voice and was contradicting him loudly. The bowmen, who had started to hurry, stood still.
Martin sighed. He caught Mogens’s eye. For a moment, he contemplated the merits of deafness. Given the simplest of signs, Mogens would be happy, he knew, to render Sersanders senseless. On the other hand, Sersanders’s uncle was one of the syndicate, and his niece was on de Fleury’s ship.
Martin hoped, if there was a Hell, and if it were near, that it was preparing to accept two strongly tipped candidates. He nodded and turned, and to a stupefied audience issued new orders. The ship was to stand down its armed men from the foredeck, prepare a defence, and await his command. It was safe. They were not yet within bowshot range of the
Svipa
. Martin didn’t care if the girl died, or Sersanders, but the Baron Cortachy would. And at the moment, he had no one to blame.
Mogens and the boy came on board. Martin was thinking out what to do next when the voice of Sersanders reached him again. He was still in the skiff, calling Martin. Martin said, ‘What?’
Although he might seem a youth, in fact Anselm Sersanders was his uncle’s agent in Scotland. One had also to bear in mind that, although short, he was an excellent jouster, and a man well enough respected in Bruges. Standing in the well of the boat shouting up, he looked cold and determined and angry. The oarsmen were huddled behind him. He said, ‘I’m going to row over and fetch back my sister. Drop anchor and wait. Then you can do what you like with the
Svipa.’
Svartecop looked at Martin and away. ‘Why,’ said Martin. ‘What an excellent notion. Of course, they may try to keep you as hostage.’
‘He won’t trouble,’ Sersanders said. ‘And if he does, at least I’ll be with her.’
‘Of course, there is the boat,’ Martin said. ‘If you don’t come back, we shall have lost a good boat.’
‘Buy another. Go and do what we planned, and go home. So long as you don’t provoke Nicholas, he’s not going to want to make trouble. I’m sure there’s enough fish for all.’
‘Except stockfish,’ said Martin thoughtfully. ‘I rather wondered about the shortage of stockfish. Does it look to you as if the
Svipa
is laden? Of course, the fish may have been bought by the
Maiden
. Ask him, Master Sersanders. If you get the chance, ask M. de Fleury.’
From the deck, Martin watched the skiff leave, threading its way into the distance. None of the creaking small boats tried to stop it. He watched until it prepared to round the far side of the
Svipa
. The young man’s eyes were fixed on the ship, which showed no particular sign of awareness. Indeed, the only sounds to be heard were those of a number of lethargic voices combined in some sort of ale-sodden ditty. Those in the skiff might have noted that one of the singers was female.
‘Holà,
Svipa!’
called Anselm Sersanders.
Walking into sight by the rail, Katelijne refrained from answering
‘Ey!’
, and not merely because M. de Fleury, possibly short of patience, was not far behind her. Instead she said quickly, ‘Anselm. Come up.’
The face in the boat, ruddy within its light beard, wore its familiar expression of harassed obstinacy. Sersanders said, ‘I’ve come for you. It’s all right. Come down.’
‘I can’t. Come up. Leave the boat and come up.’
‘You can’t stay, Kathi. Come. He can’t stop you.’
‘No,’ his sister said. Her eyes shifted sideways and back. She said, ‘Quickly, then,’ and opening the rail very fast, stepped out and trod on the ladder. Sersanders set his foot on a rung and stretched up. His sister seized hold of his hand, and instead of stepping daintily down,
hauled him up with a disjointing yank. He clung to the walloping rope and exclaimed. He saw someone else was behind her: the large person of Nicholas de Fleury. De Fleury smiled. His powerful hand released the girl’s grip and firmly shoved her back upwards on board. His equally punctilious foot, following through, courteously punted Sersanders face down in the boat. Sersanders sat up in the skiff, his nose bleeding.
‘Sorry,’ said Nicholas cheerfully. ‘She said no.’ He had stepped back and pulled up the ladder.
‘I said I couldn’t come down!’ said Kathi furiously. ‘Look what you’ve done! I asked him up! Let him up! Anselm, you don’t know what’s –’ She stopped, being deprived of the means of continuing.
Nicholas kept his hand over her face. ‘Anselm?’ he said. ‘She is well. She is protected. So far as all at home know, she has never been out of your sight. She is staying here as my special insurance, and you are staying with Martin as his. You are being thrown off this ship. There is no way you can board it. Turn, and sit up, and tell your men to row you as far back to your ship as they can. And if anything happens, lie down.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sersanders said.
‘What I say,’ said Nicholas de Fleury; and removed his hand from the face of the girl.
‘Katelijne?’ her brother said.
And very shakily, his sister answered. ‘I think you should leave.’
There was nothing more he could do. The ladder had gone. The rail was lined with men even bigger, it seemed, than their patron. Sersanders picked himself up, and sat down, and gave orders in a low voice to the oarsmen. They grasped the shafts of their blades, and the boat slowly rounded the stern and began to pull away from the
Svipa
. He sat this time in the prow, so that his accusing gaze rested all the time on the face of his sister. She was pale, and staring too; but not at him.
No one was looking at him. They were all looking past him, and up. He turned to see why. He was confounded by a sudden frenzied hauling of lines in the cod-boats. He perceived the
Unicorn
where he had left it, but now its decks were a curious antheap of jostling men. And he saw, emerging from the back of Bjarn Island, a dragon. No, not a mythical beast; but the vast high-decked bulk of the licensed Hanse ship the
Pruss Maiden
, preceded by a gentle puff of white smoke from its bows.
The
Svipa
had not been alone. Nicholas de Fleury had saved his own cod by agreeing to be the Lübeckers’ mussel.
*
Martin had no chance at all. The first shot, a warning one, fell into the water and sank by the
Unicorn
. The other cannon were trained on its deck. And by then the Lübecker was so close that the best its victim could manage was a defensive burst of stray bullets and arrows.
Martin was wearing his cuirass. He had already drawn his short sword when Svartecop laid a hand on his arm. ‘It isn’t worth it. I know Paúel. He wants the loaded ship, and its merchants to ransom. Let him have them.’
It sounded suspicious. ‘But you and the men?’ Martin said.
Svartecop grinned. ‘Lutkyn, Paúel, Colombo, Ochoa de Marchena, Mick Crackbene, myself – we belong to the same brotherhood of
classionarii
, sometimes on one side, sometimes another. Paúel knows what gold I have, and will take it. Next time I will take his. Our crew are select; he will probably keep and employ them; Mogens too. He is telling you to throw down your arms and let him board. Only don’t tell him who Reinholdt is. He despises Cologners.’
Martin took the advice. He had no one else to consult: Reinholdt had small wish to fight, and Sersanders had not returned from the
Svipa:
presumably he was now fast in irons. De Fleury must be scared, or mad, to trust the
Pruss Maiden
to keep to its bargain. This might be the end of the
Unicorn;
but very soon, according to Svartecop, the
Svipa
would find itself the next prey of Paúel Benecke. Martin of the Vatachino went forward bitterly to speak to his captors, but beneath the undeniable rage was some satisfaction. If he was to suffer, then so was de Fleury.
Outwardly placid, the
Svipa
, swaying at anchor, was corporately quite aware of the anomalies in the situation. It heartened Kathi to observe that M. de Fleury at least appeared inwardly placid as well; and sufficiently easy of conscience to take his stance on the deck with her, watching. The rest of the ship appeared plunged into activity.
Half the fishing-boats had now dispersed towards the south coast of Iceland, two hours away, and the
Unicorn
and the
Pruss Maiden
were linked together by grappling irons and cable. She couldn’t see the skiff that had carried her brother.
M. de Fleury said, ‘It’s all right. They stopped rowing when the trouble began, and Sersanders is being taken ashore by the fishermen. They’ll see he has shelter and food till it’s over.’
‘How did you know he would come to try and fetch me?’ Kathi said.
‘Because he’s touched, like his sister. But if he’d stayed on the
Unicorn
, he would just have been ransomed with everyone else.
Benecke wants an intact vessel, and cargo and money. There wasn’t much danger.’
‘So you rather hoped he would stay,’ Kathi said.
‘Well, of course. Your uncle has plenty of money, and Sersanders would quite enjoy Lübeck. The beer is stupendous, they say.’
‘Lucky Martin,’ said Kathi, gazing to sea.
‘Yes. Well – I do have plans for him.’
‘Amazing,’ said Kathi. ‘And for me, I am sure. What did you tell the
Maiden’s
blue boat? That if the whole season’s stockfish had gone, then Martin must have it?’
‘More or less,’ M. de Fleury said.
‘And now that they see the
Unicorn
doesn’t have it, Benecke will know that you have?’
‘I have?’ said M. de Fleury.
‘Yes,’ Kathi said. ‘That
was
what you were taking on board every night you were waiting for Martin?’
‘You didn’t drink your drugged claret,’ said M. de Fleury.
‘I would have drunk it rather than the syrup Mick serves. So what are you going to do when the
Maiden
comes to make you her prisoner? You don’t think she’s going to leave you alone?’
‘No,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘But they’ll take an hour or two to fix up the
Unicorn
. Put their prize crew on board. Transfer the best of her cargo. Blacken Martin’s eyes if he’s cheeky.’
‘Lucky Martin,’ said Kathi again. ‘You can’t fly. Benecke would outsail you. You can’t sail in the dark: it’s too dangerous. And what’s going to happen to Anselm?’
‘You’re going to join him,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t guess that.’
‘On the south shore of Iceland. In Hell.’
‘Naturally.’
‘When?’
‘When it snows. Yuri says it’s going to snow in an hour. Blinding snow; the kind that will stop them moving themselves or the
Unicorn
. It usually lasts for two hours.’
‘How does he know?’
‘Ask him some time. Either the
Unicorn
will pick you up, or I will. In the
Naglfar
if I must.’
Then she stared at him. ‘I’m not going. Anyway, how in Heaven’s name could the
Unicorn
…’
‘You can’t
guess
?’ said M. de Fleury. ‘You deserve to be stranded. Kathi, get ready to go. Robin will help you with clothes for your brother. The
Maiden
has cannon. And if the oratory palls, there might be a scuffle on board. Heigh-ho, you know how it is with rough boys.’
She knew how it was. Of course, he wanted her out of the way. He even wanted her safe, and her brother. But transcending everything else was his anticipation of the excitement ahead, from which she was excluded. The dizzy, glorious contest, with cannon, against a man he had never met, but who was said to be the best of his kind. He might be speaking to her, but M. de Fleury was thinking, all this while, of Paúel Benecke.
She said, ‘I think you are right. Yes, I’ll go.’
She would have preferred him to look mildly pleased; but supposed that his lack of surprise was a compliment.
The snow came in an hour, and as soon as it closed white around them, the yole arrived, and Nicholas sent Kathi off with a man he could trust and could spare. Then he joined Crackbene and John and Lutkyn and Yuri and Moriz, and all the fun started.
It was unlike the Play. Everything was based on guesswork. It had been guesswork that Martin would linger, hoping that the
Maiden
would finish Nicholas off, and in fact allowing him leisure to load up his stockfish. It had been a guess that the
Unicorn
would come when it did, using the first of the tide, and allowing itself plenty of daylight. It was pure luck that the snow had come, too; and that Glímu-Sveinn had proved to have a sense of Ultima Thulery fun, and to be so very pleased with his dogger.
He wondered how humourless the Danziger Benecke was. Crackbene and Lutkyn called him a brilliant mariner; a man who became bored with the routine of the Hanse and now worked as a mercenary. A man so lucky and rich that crews begged to join him. A man who, within the last year, had captured and held to ransom both John of Salisbury and the Lord Mayor of London.
Now Paúel was working for Lübeck and, while fishing himself, was entitled to stop other nations from fishing or trading off Iceland. He might have noticed the yoles and dogger and drawn some conclusions. The Icelanders would not, Nicholas thought, mention stockfish, but Paúel might guess. All in all, it seemed he was unlikely to honour his promise, and let the
Svipa
slip scatheless away, keeping its reward of three days’ hurried fishing. The fact was that the
Svipa
was nothing. The capital prize was himself, patron of the Banco di Niccolò – a capture to make the Bank rock, if the concern for a baby had shaken it. And, of course, Benecke could expect gold for the Sersanders youngsters. For though they were no longer here, Martin thought they were.