15
England, Summer, 1326
They were away three days later and at the coast of Normandy a week after that. The route was well signed, the roads were dry, the weather was delightful, the inns were plentiful and welcoming, and, refreshingly, no one they met was trying to kill them. Jaufre spent time riding with each of them, making his peace. Alaric was acerbic, Firas calm and might even have been a little amused, and Shasha read Jaufre a lecture about reckless behavior, notwithstanding for how worthy the cause.
“We could do nothing less for a friend who wished to be free of the harem,” Alma said, and Hayat nodded her agreement.
“‘Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace,’” Hari said, and smiled his wonderful smile.
“Did you hear when North Wind landed on Ambroise’s head?” Tiphaine said. “Crack! Squish! That’ll teach him to mess with Wu Company.”
They crossed the river Seine at Tancarville and followed it down to its mouth, where the town of Harfleur presented a bustling picture of energy and industry. “They’re starting a merchants’ association here,” Tiphaine said, returning to the inn where they had procured rooms for the night. “Perhaps Wu Company should make ourselves known to them.”
“Perhaps,” Jaufre said, looking at Alaric, just entering the common room. The Templar had been dispatched to find them passage across the Channel, and from the sour expression on his face he had not been successful. He sat down and called for a pitcher of wine but it was seen that he drank abstemiously, at least for him, and ate heartily of bread and cheese and a heavenly bean stew flavored with bits of chicken and sausage and a lot of garlic.
The inn was close to the waterfront and catered to a clientele of merchants, traders and ship’s captains. The conversation was certainly animated but it never got too loud and bargaining for freight and rates was conducted briskly and professionally. Like the city itself, the inn appeared to exist to do business.
Alaric pushed back his plate and refilled his cup. “I have not found us a ship,” he said. “It appears that Edward’s wife is cuckolding him with one of his lords, and she has betrothed their son to the daughter of Hainault. She’s brought him over to meet the girl. A smart man’s money is on Isabella’s primary purpose being to use the daughter’s dowry to finance a rebellion against him.” He saw blank looks surrounding him. “Edward, king of England. Isabella, his wife. Edward, their son. Hainault, one of the Low Countries everyone is always fighting over. And I’m sure,” he said, staring glumly into his wine, “that ineffectual bastard Charles probably has an incompetent hand in this somewhere.” He saw their looks again. “Charles IV, king of France.”
“You speak of these great people with great familiarity,” Firas said.
Alaric snorted. “I do, don’t I.”
“More to the point, what does this have to do with being unable to find transportation to England?” Jaufre said.
Alaric sighed. “All the Harfleur ships are in Calais, looking for work in transporting the royal party across this summer. Invasions are good for the transportation business. You can charge anything you like and they have to pay.”
“Not all the ships, surely,” Shasha said.
Alaric studied Johanna. “I assume we need a ship big enough to bring along the livestock?”
“You are correct in that assumption,” she said.
“Well, then.” He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat, and let them drop again. “There is one possibility I have yet to explore.”
“What?” they said in a chorus.
“I’d rather not say. I’ll leave tomorrow at first light. I should be back by nightfall. If not, the day after.”
They looked for him the next day, and the day after. On the third day he rode into the stable yard as they were assembling in the common room for dinner. He had a glorious black eye and he chewed as if some of his teeth were loose.
Nobody said anything until they were finished. Alaric poured a cup of wine, filled his mouth and held his head on one side for a moment.
Shasha cleared her throat delicately. “I don’t know that that will do any good.”
Alaric swallowed. “I don’t, either.” He put both arms on the table and leaned on them. “Jaufre.”
“Yes, Alaric.”
“You remember I told you about my sister.”
“Your what? Oh.” One night he had sat on the wall of Bastak and watched the moon travel across the sky as Alaric told him about Jaufre’s father. Not all, as it turned out, but some, and some of Alaric’s own history as well. “Your sister,” he said. “The one who, uh, convinced the guard to let you go when your father betrayed you.”
“You never asked what happened to her.”
“No.” Not that he hadn’t wondered.
“We were…separated after the escape.” Alaric swished the wine around in his cup. “She came here.”
“Here? To Harfleur?”
“Yes.” Alaric sat up and drained his cup. “She has a ship, big enough for us and the horses, too.”
Jaufre looked at Johanna, who looked at Shasha. “And will she take us to England?” Shasha said.
Alaric felt tenderly of his jaw, and winced. “For a price,” he said. “For a price. She’ll be landing us in one of the smaller ports. She doesn’t—” He thought for a moment, and then said, “She has no charter for any of the larger ports.”
Johanna might have seen the suspicion of a smile hovering around his mouth for a moment, and then it was gone, too soon for her to be sure.
They paid their charges at the inn the next morning and were off with a clatter of hooves, turning right out of the yard and trotting down the road that ran next to the river. The river widened and the trees of the high ground became marshlands covered with tall reeds, but the path stayed hard and dry. They reached their destination by sext, the sun high in the sky. By then the other side of the river was lost in the fine mist rising from the surface of the river.
It was a good-sized village clustered around a single dock stretching out into the water. Moored on either side were two ships. Both had single masts with square sails rigged between mast and boom. The hulk was round-hulled, the cog flat-bottomed. The hulk had a round stern and a side rudder. The cog had a square stern with decking built on the inside around three sides, and a center rudder controlled by a capstan.
A woman stood in the stern of the cog, watching them come. As they approached, Jaufre saw that she was tall and thin, long of face, with dark hair and eyes. The similarity was unmistakable, but unlike Alaric the lady crackled with energy. “Are these yours?” she said.
“They are,” Alaric said.
“Well, get them aboard before we miss the tide.”
Introductions were deferred until the horses were loaded into the hold, where stalls had been created by boards bolted to the hull. Posts formed a center aisle. “Hobble them,” the captain said, peering down from the deck. “I don’t want one of them to take a notion to kick holes into my hull in mid-channel.”
The horses were duly hobbled and backed into their stalls. North Wind’s indignant trumpeting could probably have been heard in Harfleur. He knew all too well from his only other sea passage how uncomfortable being under sail could be, and he did not take kindly to the feel of a deck rising and falling beneath his hooves again. Johanna held his head and soothed him while more boards were slotted in to form gates. They went further and ran a line over the horses’ backs, in case they took it into their heads to rear. A couple of bales of hay were tossed between the two ranks of stalls. North Wind calmed and deigned to lip at it.
Johanna gave him a last reassuring pat and went up on deck. The lines had already been loosed and the downriver current was parting them rapidly from the dock. Gulls screamed overhead and Johanna saw a pod of porpoises surface and blow and dive off their bow, backs gleaming wetly in the sun. At mid-river the captain said, “Set sail!” The large square of canvas raised and shook itself out and bellied gen
tly before the offshore breeze. Through it all the sunlight on the river was bright enough to blind, and it was warm even out here on the water. In her ear Jaufre murmured, “It can’t be this easy, surely?”
She laughed and turned, leaning on the rail. “Hush. The gods will hear, and make us suffer.”
They stood like that, smiling at each other, for a good long while, and then in mutual unspoken agreement turned and watched as they left the mouth of the river and Normandy behind. “So,” he said finally, “what do you reckon? A pirate?”
She looked over her shoulder at the captain, who stood, arms folded, behind the helmsman at the capstan, legs spread in a stance that took the small swell beneath their hull with ease. She was dressed much as they were, in tunic and trousers, a wide sash of some dark red material wrapped twice around her waist.
As they watched Alaric approached the stern, and the captain’s arms dropped and she advanced to the steps he was approaching, where she planted her hands on her hips and glared down at him. He halted immediately and returned to where the rest of the company was gathered amidships. “I don’t think they parted well,” she said thoughtfully.
“No,” Jaufre agreed.
“What do you think happened?”
“Nothing he’s proud of,” he said, keeping Alaric’s confidence. “Or he wouldn’t have let her give him that black eye.”
The downstream current and the outgoing tide took them out into the Channel, and there a nice strong offshore wind took over. The swell was minimal, with no chop at all. The cog slipped through the water like North Wind down a race track, leaving a wake of frothing foam behind them.
The captain spoke to the helmsman and took to the deck in a single bound. Jaufre and Johanna joined the others as she reached them. “All right,” she said briskly, “if the wind doesn’t change we might make landfall before dark. Alaric told you that you will be set ashore in Cornwall? The south of England,” she amended when she saw their blank expressions. Her language was cultured and refined, its timbre and accent much like her brother’s. “It’s a rocky, barren coast but the harbor is good, if small, and well sheltered, and there is a place for you to stay the night. Not an inn, but I—do business with the owner there. He’s a genial soul and welcomes travelers. The agreement was half up front, half upon delivery, and I will expect payment in full before we land you.” She nodded and marched back to the helm.
They ate bread and cheese and last year’s pears for lunch, and then Jaufre took his courage in his hands and ventured to approach the aft deck. “Captain?”
She turned her head and saw him standing at the foot of the stairs. She hesitated, and then nodded permission. “Yes?” she said.
He smiled the smile that the ladies of Cambaluc had considered his secret weapon. The captain did not visibly melt. “I wondered how often you made this passage,” he said.
“As often as I have paying customers,” she said. “Why?”
He cast an appraising glance over her craft. “I make the length to be some sixteen rods?”
“Seventeen,” she said.
“And the beam, one and a half?”
“One and three-quarters.”
“Making your payload—”
“Four thousand hundredweight.”
“Very nice,” he said. “Big enough to make a good living, not big enough to be too enticing a target, and fast enough—” he glanced at their wake “—to outrun all but the most serious trouble.”
She smiled, he thought reluctantly, but she did smile. “What is your interest in my Faucon?”
Falcon, he thought. An apt name, as falcons were swift and elusive. Also predatory, but he preferred not to dwell on that at the moment. “I’m a trader,” he said. “I’m always interested in the means of transporting goods.”
She eyed the hilt of the sword looming over his shoulder. “A trader.”
“Yes, a trader,” Jaufre said firmly. “Where you are landing us, do you call there on a regular basis?”
This time she laughed. “Say rather, on an irregular basis,” she said.
“Do you ship fleeces?” he said. “Wool?”
“Often,” she said.
“And land them at your village?”
“It’s not my village,” she said, “and no, I land English goods at Harfleur. There is no point in unloading my cargo at the village and then paying someone to haul it all the way to a buyer, now, is there?” Her voice was mocking.
“None at all,” he said. “How do the Harfleur wool merchants find the quality of your fleeces?”
“English wool is much prized by merchants all over the continent,” she said.
“I know,” he said, “I’ve heard nothing else since Venice. English wool seems to be universally regarded as the finest wool there is.” He meditated for a moment. “If an ambitious trader—”
“Such as yourself,” she said, a faint smile lifting one corner of her mouth.
“Such as myself,” he said, returning her smile, “if such a trader, new to the ways of England, was desirous of buying and exporting wool, how would he go about it?”
Still smiling that faint smile, she shook her head. “Don’t even think it, young sir. The fees will be astronomical. You’ll need a charter from your local lord to do business. Every shire and city you pass through will levy a tax. There will be export fees, and the port fees—” She shook her head again. “No, young sir. For a stranger, a man new to England, one with no connections, such a thing cannot be arranged.”
He was somewhat dashed by the certainty in her voice, and then rallied. “And how would one avoid some, or all, of those obstacles, captain?”
She smiled warmly. “Why, however would I know that, young sir?”
When she laughed he laughed with her.
When he rejoined the others, Johanna raised an eyebrow at him. “We were discussing the wool trade,” he said. “What can I say? It’s been months since I bought or sold anything that wasn’t for our own consumption. Time to start thinking like a trader again.”
They rolled up together in his cloak and fell asleep, protected by the gunnels from the sharper sea wind, comforted by the warmth of last rays of the setting sun, lulled to sleep by the gentle swell of the ocean.
It was dark when they woke. Jaufre sat up and Alaric said immediately, as if he’d been waiting for him, “The wind changed. It took longer to get here than the captain estimated. We’ll land at first light. Go back to sleep.”
Instead, Jaufre got up and went to stand next to Alaric, who was leaning on the rail. “How did she end up here?”
Maybe the concealing dark inspired in Alaric the urge to confide, as it had that night in Bastak. “Angelique got me out of the dungeon, but we were pursued. Her horse went lame. I panicked and left her behind.” When Jaufre would have spoken he held up a hand. “Don’t. There is nothing you can call me that I haven’t called myself over the years. There is no word, no epithet, no curse bad enough.” He gave a laugh that was more like a groan. “If Robert had known, he would have called me all of them and invented some new ones, too.”
Memories of his father were so dim and far off now. Jaufre knew he looked like him, height, hair, build, eyes. He remember a deep voice and a rich laugh, and large, calloused hands over his on the hilt of the sword he now carried. But he liked the man Alaric spoke of. The man who would never leave a comrade behind, let alone a sister.
Water lapped at the sides of the cog. Jaufre thought he could see the dim outlines of land off the beam. They appeared to be standing off a coast. “How did she end up here?” he said. “And how did you know where she was?”
Alaric sighed. “When we were in Avignon, I sent a message home. What was my home. To our old priest, who was always a good friend to the two of us. He was the one who got us our horses.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t know if he would reply, but he did. In not very kind terms. Oh, nothing less than I deserved, and I knew it. But he did tell me to look for Angelique in Harfleur, as the capt
ain of a ship, and her own ship, no less.” His voice was rueful. “Our father disowned her when her part in my escape was learned, but she had a lover, a Dane, a ship’s captain—this ship. She eloped with him, and she sailed with him. He died four years later, after which the crew accepted her as their new captain. She settled in Harfleur, and eventually wrote to Father Étienne that she was alive and well.”
“Is she a pirate?”
“What? No! What makes you think that?”
There was a smile in Jaufre’s voice. “She is so far as I can see unattached to any guild or association. She moors in a small village inconvenient to offloading merchandise in Harfleur, but very convenient to hide any cargo she cares to ship from prying eyes. She lands in a foreign port so small—” he gestured to where he could hear the surf hissing against the shore “—it is completely dark at night.”
Alaric sighed. “You are entirely too observant, and in that, young Jaufre, you are very like your father, indeed.” He paused. “Not a pirate, no, but a smuggler, I fear.”
“And used to using her fists in a fight?”
“Indeed, and able to use them to give me a proper welcome. Now get some sleep. It will be dawn soon.”
16
England, Summer, 1326
The dawn broke on clouds gathering over a steep coast, colored sullen orange to deep red. They were reflected against the oily, steadily increasing swell beneath the Faucon’s hull. “Yes,” the captain said, “let’s get docked now.”
She brought the ship in close enough to what looked like an uninterrupted shoal that her passengers held their collective breath, and then a ray of sun broke through the clouds to illuminate a narrow channel. The Faucon threaded it with easy confidence.
Inside the reef was a small, half-moon bay, with a narrow edging of golden sand on the left and an outcropping of rock on the right that formed a natural breakwater. There was a man-made rock pier, patiently chipped to a broad level surface just long enough to dock one ship the size of the Faucon. The shore dropped so steeply here that there was room and to spare for the ship’s draft at any tide, and there were men waiting to catch their lines.
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