Lutkyn shouted something, and he answered. It had to do with the herring fleet. The Moray Firth had been covered with boats, and the caravel had gone far out to sea to avoid them. He was already resigned to doubling the length of this part of the voyage; the weather couldn’t be helped. They would meet other vessels no doubt, and would claim to be bound for Deerness. It was early: they might be believed. But even at the wintry beginning of March, there was traffic at sea.
The stop in the Orkneys was vital; but then so were all the components of this expedition. Adorne had accused him, with Roger, of achieving nothing complete; of attempting nothing with a whole heart. John and Crackbene could have enlightened them. It was true, he could not compare what he had done in December with this. That had been wholly within his control, and enacted in a single long day. This was a scheme quite as intricate, prepared over a very long time and necessarily unrehearsed and full of imponderables.
He had found it a relief. He had drawn upon all his strengths for Willie’s Play, and had been rewarded. Yet in the end, empty of emotion after the white-hot intensity of the experience, he had come to question that sense of transcendental fulfilment. The ecstasy of creation had been there. But there also, he saw, had been ecstasy of quite another kind: the man-eating pleasure, for a space, of absolute personal power. An airless, passionate place where, for a time, he could foster those he wished to bind to each other, and to him. A hatchery of chicks is ready and will be emptied this day.
It was as well, perhaps, that Gelis had destroyed the blazing moment so deftly.
Before Godscalc’s death, he had discussed this other project with Crackbene, and Crackbene had dismissed it as crazy. ‘They’d slaughter you. Everyone would.’
Nicholas had been irritated by Mick’s lack of vision. ‘They’d try to. They needn’t. Look. The Hanse – the Baltic ports – got a monopoly of the cod-fishing in Iceland, provided they paid dues to Iceland’s masters at Bergen. That didn’t last. Now, the only Hanse ships left paying at Bergen are the annual big vessels from Lübeck and Rostock and Stralsund, and all the others are sneaking to Iceland direct, and battling among themselves for the illegal catch. So not only fish are getting killed, I grant you, off the Westmann Islands; but there are fortunes being made. Why not by us?’
‘We haven’t a ship,’ Crackbene had said.
‘Then get one.’
‘Once we get one, it will be known what we’re doing.’
‘Will it?’ had said Nicholas.
A pause. ‘You’d have to get to the fishing-ground first. Even then, you’d find the Pruss Maiden likely creeping up on you. And then forty others.’
‘We have a master gunner,’ said Nicholas. ‘And yes, we’d need to get there very early, before the convoys arrive.’
‘In March. In the Arctic Circle in February and March.’
‘The Westmanns are south of the Circle. You’ve done it before. We’ve just talked of it.’
‘And even if the foreign ships aren’t there, the Icelanders will be. Their Governor’s Danish. They’re an island colony ruled by Denmark like the Faroes. They have a contract with the official Hanse ships, and that’s all. They don’t like it; they hate it, but they’re helpless. As I said, they’ll slaughter you to save their own taxes and skins. Or if they don’t, there will be an inter-state row and they’ll hang you.’
‘You’ve forgotten,’ said Nicholas. ‘The King of Scotland is being contracted to Margaret of Denmark.’
‘Are you simple?’ had said Crackbene, who occasionally forgot he owed Nicholas anything. ‘How in hell can the King of Denmark afford to fall out with the Hanse? And King James, so far as I’ve noticed, doesn’t have any uncles or aunties in England. What do you do when a fleet of bullies from Hull sets about boarding you?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ Nicholas had said. The scheme was possible. He had seen at once it was possible. Mind you, he hadn’t guessed at the time that Anselm Adorne would find out what he was building in Danzig and decide to compete. But it created interesting odds. The Banco di Niccolò against the Hanse, the English, the Icelanders, the Vatachino and the sea. He would have laid a good wager with Roger except that if he didn’t win, he wouldn’t be in a position to pay him.
In the event, they didn’t sink between there and Orkney, although they lost a sail before they got into Scapa, and even there the ship needed four anchors. Mowat went ashore first, and came back with good news and an invitation. The yoles were built and delivered, and no one had spotted them. Bishop Tulloch was not on the island. And they were welcome to rest as many nights as they liked at his second cousin’s.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Robin who, in his new element, was becoming forgetful of form like Mick Crackbene.
‘To spend the night ashore and take on provisions. Make the most of it,’ Nicholas said.
Robin scrambled down to the ship’s boat beside him. ‘Yoles are boats.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Fishing-boats, clinker-built, with one mast and three pairs of oars.’
‘A team can build one in three or four days,’ Nicholas said. ‘In any small corner. Provided they are given the wood.’
‘The Earl of Orkney—’ began Robin in a great burst of realisation.
‘There is no Earl of Orkney,’ Nicholas said. ‘Only a Bishop. And he is away. The omens, in fact, are quite good.’
They were storm-stayed for three days on Orkney but kept away from the other bu farms and the castle. Some of them had been here before; none seemed surprised by the rolling moors, the looming menhirs, the sheer red cliffs from which waterfalls spouted upwards. English ships had also touched there. Robin, the climber, brought back battered hooks found embedded in fish-bones. Crackbene recognised them.
‘But last season’s,’ he said. ‘And don’t concern yourself. Going north, the English ships prefer passing by Shetland.’ He paused. ‘But all the same, we ought to get on.’
‘How near are we?’ said Robin.
Crackbene stretched and looked down, hands on hips. Like all of them, his face showed a rough salty stubble, and the deep indents at his nostrils looked grim. M. de Fleury was the only person who joked with him. He said, ‘We’ll be halfway in two days.’
‘Halfway!’ Robin said.
“The Faroe Islands are halfway, near enough. We lost a day here, and we had a slow start with the dogger. We’re going to an island only two hundred miles east of Greenland.’
‘I know,’ Robin said.
They boarded next day, the fifth of March, at Deer Sound, having left Eric Mowat behind. Robin was sorry. Parting, he had tried to say something about Orkney. ‘It isn’t really like anywhere else, although you think it’s going to be.’
Mowat had grunted. ‘Picts and Irish and Vikings. You won’t find that mixture anywhere else, although Caithness comes closest. The history of Orkney was written in Iceland. The great earls lie here. They say you can hear the voice of Thorfinn in the wind.’
‘Who was Thorfinn?’ Robin said.
‘A better sailor than any of us,’ said Eric Mowat. ‘And the greatest earl of them all. His son Paul had a granddaughter who carried the earldom of Orkney to the Scots Earl of Atholl. A daughter a few generations on brought it to the Earl of Strathearn. And a girl descended from them gave the earldom with her hand to a Sinclair, and one of them was to sail further west than most men live to describe. Picts, Irish and Vikings. You can push the blood from one line to another, but it remains aye a powerful ichor.’
‘Dysart,’ Robin said suddenly. He thought of the crewman he had noticed, in the boat that had brought him to Montrose. He said, his voice hollow, ‘Lord Sinclair’s land is between Roslin and Dysart.’
Mowat grinned at him. ‘Aye, a great place for the herring, the Forth. A few well-built doggers can earn their price there.’ He contemplated Robin more seriously, and feinted a blow to his chin. ‘Come away! It’s the mark of your master’s fine native cunning, not sorcery. You wait and see wh
at happens in Iceland.’
‘The Mouth of Hell is going to open, they say. Dmitri says it will open this year.’
‘Then let’s hope you get your trading done first,’ Mowat said. ‘Then Hell can do what it likes with the Lübeckers and the Vatachino and the rest.’ He paused. ‘It’s only a mountain, you know.’
‘I know,’ Robin said.
They reached the Faroes a day later than planned, on the Sunday. They were sure, that is, that it was Sunday. They had Crackbene’s word, supported by Lutkyn and Yuri, that the crags and drengs that passed, inch by inch in the fog, belonged to the Danish archipelago of the Faroes. They were meant to be seeking the shelter of Tórshavn. They could not even see the sea. Between the regular nerve-fraying blares of their own trumpet, they could hear the regular plop of the lead-line, and beyond that, a subdued piping of seabirds, and far, far distant from that, a lowing of elf-horns, or of trolls, or of small, invisible boats also mournfully announcing their presence. Eventually they dropped anchor and lay unpleasantly rocked by invisible rollers, while a skiff was prepared to take the patron and Crackbene ashore. Father Moriz and John declined the privilege.
Nicholas said, ‘You’re sure you don’t want to come?’ Suspended in fog, his gilt-bearded face looked capable of biting off hands, like a leonine post-box.
‘We don’t mind,’ said the German priest blandly. ‘Ask where we are, and if they reply in Chinese, come and tell us.’ Then he went back to the cabin, where he was beating John le Grant at a stiff game of cards.
The boat returned full of stores, and proceeded to ply back and forth. The ship lurched as its holds were replenished and then became preternaturally quiet, except for the groans and bangs and creaks of its timbers and rigging. All the crew were on shore, except for the card-players and a couple of watchmen.
‘It was Tórshavn,’ said Moriz. ‘And the right harbour. Isn’t it unwise, allowing the seamen on shore?’
‘No,’ said John, picking up cards. ‘They need the change, they need the girls, and there’s nothing to get sick or drunk with. Why did you come on this voyage?’
‘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 Moge
ns 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
FOR 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.’
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 36