I put on my exasperated-bailiff face. “I fear I amuse her,” said I. “She looks on me as a jester, or a performing dog.”
“Perhaps you should exert yourself to amuse her further,” said Edevane.
He was giving me little choice. I could comply, or I could become his enemy, and he would be a far more formidable enemy than Wenlock or Westley.
“Well,” said I, “if I am to guard Her Highness from those who would oppose the crown, I shall do my best. But I cannot simply appoint myself buffoon to a princess, she must choose to accept my company.”
“You are an ingenious man,” said the secretary. “I think you can play whatever part will serve.” He paused for a moment, and then said, “I could offer you a stipend, if you feel that would aid you.”
I felt heat burn in my blood, and I hoped I was not showing the rage this suggestion had ignited in me. “My lord,” I said, “I hardly need to be paid to uphold the crown. I have done so, you may remember, to my cost.”
“I beg your pardon, Lord Warden,” Edevane said. “I am so used to the crooked ways of the court that I sometimes forget there are honorable men in the world.”
A bell rang out from somewhere above the roof leads, and Edevane rose from his chair. I rose from the low stool, my knees creaking. Two varlets entered and, without a word, took his red robe from the stand and helped him into it.
“The house is about to convene, and I must attend,” said Edevane. “I thank you for your visit, and I hope you will let me know how the matter of Inchmaden falls out.”
I bade the principal private secretary farewell and walked to the House of Burgesses to listen to the afternoon’s debate. It was much the same debate as had been heard that morning, and I saw that Priscus could barely restrain his impatience, twisting and shifting on his throne, his baleful eyes turning from one member to the next, as if marking them for some bloody private vengeance. Perhaps that was in fact what he was doing.
I found myself thinking of the princess Floria and the menacing shadows that seemed to surround her, shadows that seemed to have taken on a more tangible form in the last half hour.
My crooked finger ached, as if to tell me of a coming storm.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The storm broke the next day, and cold rain sluiced off the roof in sheer, shimmering sheets while a freezing wind whipped up white wave crests on the gray lake. My crooked finger throbbed, and I thought of Lady Westley fleeing through the cold, and I felt thoroughly miserable. I decided not to brave the weather in order to witness another day of argument in the Burgesses, so it was not until the afternoon that I heard that Umbrey and Greene had been arrested and carried off to Murkdale Hags. The Burgesses, thus rendered compliant, voted the funds for the war and then began the complicated business of working out a means of raising the money.
This news I heard at the Admiralty Office, where—once the storm had abated somewhat—I had gone in search of privateering commissions for my ships. I owned two ships outright, the Sea-Holly galleon, which I’d acquired in the war, and the Ostra pinnace of eighty tons, which I’d built in Ethlebight out of my profits. Sea-Holly was a slow merchant, but Ostra was a fast, agile little ship, ideal for a privateer. Ideally I would want privateering commissions for both, for though Sea-Holly was not suitable to cruise for enemy merchants near Thurnmark, yet she might meet Thurnmark ships by chance on the seas, ships that had not yet heard they were at war, and with a letter of marque might legally seize them.
Against this I had to balance the fact that for each commission I had to bond myself to the tune of two hundred royals, and I debated with myself whether Sea-Holly’s commission was worth the expense. Yet the money would come back to me after the war, and so in the end I purchased the commission.
I also purchased commissions for some ships I owned along with Kevin Spellman and his father, including the pinnace Able that had aided in the salvage of Royal Stilwell, and the great galleon Sovereign, which would not act as a privateer, but which was so large and well armed that it could easily overcome any Thurnmark vessels encountered on its long trip to Tabarzam.
Some other ships I decided not to commission, but instead left the matter to the judgment of my partners.
I sent the commissions by messenger either to Kevin’s father in Selford, or to the ship captains themselves, if I knew where to find them.
The Admiralty Office was a small building and served but as an auxiliary to the Admiralty itself, which was in Selford, in an old basilica. The place was busy, and while I waited my turn in the chill lobby, I heard of the arrest of the unfortunate Burgesses. It was the common opinion that they would soon be hanged on some pretext or another.
Later that afternoon I went to the Flesh Shambles, where most of Howel’s butchers had their shops, and I made some inquiries about cooks. I wanted to know which of the city’s cooks had showed a fine and discriminating knowledge of animal flesh and the ways of preparing it, and of these, which might be amenable to work for a new master. Most of those recommended to me came almost daily to provide for their masters’ kitchens, and so I left messages for them asking if they would call upon me at my house.
This led to my hiring Harry Noach, who had been the undercook to Count Older, a cousin-german to Count Wenlock who normally resided in Amberstone but had come to Howel for the meeting of the Estates. Noach brought to my house samples of his work, which included some drawings of the great marchpane centerpieces used at formal banquets, where sugar-castles or fabulous beasts or landscapes with rivers of fine wine were placed for the delectation of the guests. I bought him away from Count Older and put him in charge of my kitchen with instructions to develop dishes according to my plan.
After a few days Greene and Umbrey were released from prison and resumed their places in the House of Burgesses. Neither Hulme nor Tryon could manage the Burgesses without them, and Their Majesties had ceased to attend once the Burgesses had voted the bill that most concerned them. Priscus had got his twenty thousand soldiers, and the details of how he was to pay for them did not concern him.
The issues of taxation were not resolved when the old holiday of the Silly Shepherds blossomed in mid-December, and work ceased for a day while everyone in Howel, from the palace to the meanest apprentice in the tallow-chandlers’ guild, dressed as rustics and tried to play the syrinx. At midday there was a regatta, to take place entirely under sail, and Dunnock and the other galleys came to the start on a fine sunny day, with a light breeze blowing from the northwest. I had confidence, for Boatswain Lepalik and I had drilled the crew to perfection under sail.
Boatswain Lepalik deserves perhaps a mention. He comes from an island far to the south and east of the Candara Coast, past the celestial equator and beyond the border of any map I have ever seen. His people have black skins, and the men shave their heads and work hard to sculpt their bodies like ancient athletes, in order to attract the women, who they prefer corpulent. Lepalik often complained to me that the women of Duisland were far too thin, and the slender Aekoi women ridiculous. Lepalik’s people are great sailors in their outrigger canoes, and Lepalik hunted whales, hurling the great harpoon tipped with obsidian.
One day a harpooned whale dragged the canoe for many miles before dying, after which a storm carried the boat far away from its prey. The mariners were quite lost and wandered the sun-soaked sea until a foreign ship rescued them. That began Lepalik’s travels through eastern realms whose names come to us as legends, for there is always work for a good sailor. Through good service he was awarded the silver whistle of a boatswain, and he worked his way to Tabarzam, where he came aboard Royal Stilwell as a replacement for a man who had died.
He is well liked by his crew, but he has begun to long for home, for he has had no word of his family since the storm carried him away. There are a few other black men in Duisland, but none hail from as far away as his subequatorial island. Now that he is over fifty and there is gray in his bushy beard, Lepalik wishes to return to see how his family
and friends have fared. I have vowed to aid him in this, and will send him as far as Tabarzam, and give him some money to buy passage to his island, if he can find it.
On the day of the regatta we circled and circled before the start line, the sail booming and slatting overhead, and then Lord Thistlegorm had the signal gun fired, and we set out on a reach, with the wind coming over my left shoulder. No sooner had we begun than fine wisps of mist began to rise from the water. The wisps grew thicker, and as I made the first turn, I saw white towers of fog on the northern horizon, towers that came down slowly before the wind, like dancers in the stately pavane.
As we passed behind the islands, the mist engulfed us completely, and I felt a fine, fresh drizzle on my face. Now my galley seemed alone on the lake, the water chuckling beneath the transom as the mainsail shivered close-hauled. I could hear boats all around me, but they were all invisible, and I was worried that one might accidentally come aboard us. I called out “Dunnock! Dunnock!” to let the other captains know where I sailed, and soon I heard others take up their own calls, but the cries echoed eerily in that fine mist, and it was hard to know where any vessel was by the sound alone.
I knew that soon I must clear the tail of the second island, and then come about onto my new course for the finish line, but I could not tell where the island was, or the finish line, or for that matter where my own galley might be. For all that I knew, I might be sailing entirely in the wrong direction, or about to run aground on the western bank. So I made my best guess, called the crew to tend the staysail set forward of the mast, and put the helm down.
“Helm’s alee!” I called, and then immediately began to call “Dunnock! Dunnock!” for I knew I was about to cross the path of the other vessels, and that I risked a collision. Water sloshed against the rudder, and the sails flogged as we came into the eye of the wind. A ghostly form appeared just ahead, a dark sail looming directly before the bow. My blood froze, but the other galley crossed just inches ahead of Dunnock’s bow, and I caught a glimpse of the terrified, staring eyes of the towheaded helmsman as we crossed his stern. He wore a shepherd’s smock, and I saw a flute tucked into his belt.
Then we seemed alone on the water again, moving much faster now, with the water laughing as it ran down the strakes and the mist cool on my cheeks. I called out “Dunnock” every few seconds and braced myself to run aground on one or another of the islands. Yet the minutes passed, no islands appeared, and I began to feel myself more at ease.
Which ease came too soon, for a galley appeared before us, crossing our bows. I threw down the helm, but the rudder bit too late at the water, and we swung slightly to starboard and rammed the other vessel on its port quarter. Planks shrieked and snapped. Dunnock came to a smashing halt, its sails and gear crashing. I was thrown forward onto my knees. The other vessel rolled, sending up a vast white wave, but it then came back upright. I heard the chuckle of water as the lake began to pour into the stricken vessel.
I told the crew to douse the sails, so that we would not sail away and leave the other galley stranded and sinking, and the canvas came down with a rattle. I rose from my scraped knees and ran forward, only to encounter the formidable glare of the Count of Wenlock. We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then I recovered from my surprise and found my tongue.
“Well, my lord,” said I, “it seems you have once again chosen a flawed instrument.”
Wenlock’s pale face darkened with anger. “Curse you to hell, Quillifer!”
“I believe the correct form of address is ‘Lord Warden,’ ” said I.
Wenlock brandished a fist. “Damned if I’ll ever call you ‘lord’!”
“Then you may sink with your boat,” I said, “though I will do your crew the courtesy of saving their lives.”
One of Wenlock’s crew reached for Dunnock’s gunwale and pulled it close to come aboard. Wenlock fixed him with a furious eye. “Don’t you dare!” he snarled.
The crewman shrugged. “I can’t swim,” he said in the most sensible way, and came aboard my vessel.
At that moment a gun boomed out from the shore. I thought it perhaps signaled the end of the race, but after we had finished taking Wenlock’s crew aboard, the gun fired again, and I realized that it was meant to guide us home. I looked at Wenlock, whose boat was far down by the stern.
“Last chance, my lord.”
“Go and drown yourself!”
“I am not the man in danger of drowning,” I said. If his own foolishness filled his lungs with water, it was none of my affair. I would be rid of an enemy, and Edevane of an instrument, both of which developments I thought could only improve the world.
I told the crew to stand by the halliards and be ready to raise the sail. And then, in less time than it takes to relate, another boat raced up from behind us and stove in our stern. None of us saw it coming until it struck. I was thrown back onto the stern counter, and by the time I regained my feet, my shoes were splashing in lake water.
I lunged out over the stern counter and seized the other ship’s forestay, to keep it from sailing off, for now two crews needed rescuing. The three vessels spun in circles, powered by the third boat’s sails. The captain of the other boat was a gentleman from Loretto, and he babbled apologies as our boats spun around one another.
“Get your sails down!” I told him. Holding the two galleys together by main strength, I felt as if I were being stretched on the rack.
Lake water gurgled beneath me. My feet grew cold and wet. Crewmen hopped up onto the stern counter and jumped to the Lorettan captain’s boat, and sometimes uncivilly used me as a bridge. Last of all came Wenlock, who used my boat to cross without asking my permission. Like a proper captain, I was last to abandon Dunnock.
Neither Dunnock nor Wenlock’s boat would sink. They were built of wood, and it is a property of wood to float. But as they filled with water, the weight of the masts and sails would roll them over, and the crew would probably have drowned or frozen before anyone could come out from the shore to rescue them, even if the wrecks could have been located in the fog. As soon as the fog cleared, I would take a boat out and tow Dunnock to shore, where I could hope to have it repaired in time for the next race.
The Lorettan captain raised his sails, and we forged off into the mist, the galley riding low with all the extra weight of the two rescued crews. The gun boomed out from shore every minute or so. It seemed to me that the sound grew louder with each fire, so we were on something like the right track.
I looked at Wenlock. “It is a shame that we shall neither of us know who would have beaten the other, my lord,” I said. “Unless we manage to settle it now.”
“You rammed my boat,” Wenlock said, “and you did it deliberately, like the cullion you are. It is only justice that you lost your own galley.”
“Yet we can finish the race between us.” I began to undo my jerkin. “We can still race to shore. But we will have to do it without boat or crew.”
He looked at me in scorn. “You mean to swim?”
“If you will swim with me.”
He sneered. “I hardly think so.”
I tore my leather jerkin off and began to unfasten my doublet. “It may be that you are afraid of the water,” I suggested. “That can’t be helped, but perhaps I can spur you with a wager. Twenty-five royals?”
His face was stony. He had not liked the suggestion that he was afraid. “I’ll want odds. Two to one.”
I laughed. “I am not so foolish as that, but I will wager thirty-five against your twenty-five.”
Hatred warred with doubt in his eyes, and hatred won. He began to pull off his jerkin.
We stripped to our shirts and stood clinging to shrouds on either side of the galley. The captain looked at us as if we had been struck mad. The crewmen began to make wagers among themselves. I turned to Wenlock.
“At the next gunshot,” I said. “Swim well, my lord, and you may recover some of the money you spent buying Westley.”
Wenlock tri
ed to snarl at me, but there was a hollow quality to his anger and a haunted look in his eye. His plan to kill me had gone astray, and now I had brought the matter out in public. And possibly Lord Edevane had already raised the subject with him, and he knew himself now for a base, crawling creature who would spend his days as the secretary’s cringing lackey.
The cannon echoed through the mist, and Wenlock and I leaped into the lake. As I landed in the frigid water, my heart in its shock seemed to boom out louder than the gun, and I felt the sting of lake water in my nose and throat. I bobbed up behind the boat and struck out in its wake. Beside me I saw Wenlock’s white hair rising from the water, and his long arms began to thrash the water. I wondered for a moment if he would view this as an opportunity to murder me, but he did not look at me, but instead directed his gaze at the boat as he pursued it. Encouraged by the violent thunder of my heart, I put on a burst of speed, and soon we were separated. I knew not where Wenlock was, but that was not surprising, for once the galley vanished into the mist, I did not know where I was myself. I tried to choose my path based on the firing of the cannon, but the gunshots were too far apart for me to be sure of staying on a bearing, and the shots themselves seemed to come from no constant direction.
I was surprised at how quickly I had managed to get lost. I began to tire, my breath rasped in my throat, and my fingers and toes grew numb in the cold. I plodded on at a deliberate pace, uncertain whether I was moving in the right direction. I knew that the distance from the islands to the quay at Ings Magna was about a league and a half, and I was confident that the galleys had covered most of that distance before I leaped into the water. The distance to shore should be no more than half a league, and I had reckoned less than five hundred yards, but that reckoning assumed the galleys had been heading in the right direction. But still I assured myself that if I kept swimming, I must encounter land sooner or later.
The cannon roared out every minute, and I seemed to grow no closer to the sound. I thought that I might be turning circles in the middle of the lake and half expected to encounter the overturned hull of Dunnock. I was panting for breath, my heart was hammering in my breast, and I had lost feeling in my arms and legs. Even my nose seemed to burn with frost.
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