‘Is it wide enough, in your opinion, for a man to be lowered?’
‘Oh, certainly it’s wide enough. Even your constable – but it angles out at the base—’
‘So I noticed. The thing we have to do is get one man down – a swimmer who can navigate the waters off the rocks – then trust him to steal a dinghy, a sufficient length of cord, row the boat under the window after dark and toss the cord up to us—’
‘Throw a rope forty feet upward?’
‘No, you’re right. We must tell him to find a weight and some fishing line. Catch it as it comes through the grille and we can pull the rope up after.’
‘I admire your determination, Halcón. But there’s something I must tell you. Before we even tip the slab. I don’t know how it is at Tremellion, but a number of castles I’ve seen – the latrine shafts are barred at the outlet, to stop attackers clawing upward with picks and flexible ladders. The fortress of Punta Siderna was captured like that. And not the only one, I imagine.’
Remembering others he’d learned about during his months of military training in the muddy fens of Norfolk, Baynard said, ‘Some are barred. Some aren’t.’ But he chose not to add that the outlets at Tremellion were grilled for that very reason…
* * *
Working fast now, time against them, the prisoners struggled to loosen and lift the slab of the latrine. Crusaders and corsairs alike were required to donate their longest garments, Guthric knotting the motley collection into a thick, knobbled rope. Striding three times the width of the chamber, he measured the hawser at fifty feet, long enough for a man to descend to the rocks.
But which man should it be?
Renato Moretti was the first to volunteer. ‘Listen to me, Crusader. I know this port. And the fishing village on the other side of the headland. I can get you a boat, the line and cord and so forth, row it back to the window—’
‘Or maybe reach the village and keep running? Or find a craft and hoist sail? Your offer’s angelic, Moretti, but I think your memory of us might lapse.’
‘You mean you wouldn’t trust me to return?’
‘No, my friend. I mean I wouldn’t trust you below the first knot of Guthrie’s clothes line. You’re a liar and a trickster, Renato, with more crimes to your name, I’d guess, than there are dates on the calendar. If we ever get free of this place, my unlikely angel, the last two to leave will be me – and you.’
‘You’re making a bad mistake, Crusader.’
‘It’s possible. But no worse than allowing you to make good your escape.’
* * *
Enrique de Vaca volunteered, his loyalty unquestioned, though his offer rejected by the phrase he himself had once used.
‘That time we were aboard the Gros Ventre,’ Falkan murmured. ‘Didn’t you say to me then you’d never been further from land than midway between the banks of a shallow river? So when you find yourself pounded by the waves down there on the rocks? Will you really be able to breast them, amigo mio! Tell me you will and I’ll credit it, but—’
‘You could put me in the water keg and I’d drown,’ Enrique admitted. ‘Water’s for a man to wash with when he’s dirty. Drink when he’s thirsty. But otherwise – well, to tell you the truth, I flounder when it rains.’
* * *
Guthric offered to test his own rope, but was gently dissuaded by Tremellion. There were many reasons for prohibiting the Saxon, Baynard imagining how it would be if Guthric ever reached the village. He wouldn’t so much steal a boat on the sly, as commandeer it, fisting aside all those who’d dare prevent him. Oh, he’d get the cord and the fishing line, then bend the oars as he rowed beneath the window. But he’d also leave a score of men moaning on the beach, panic spreading, a trumpet once again blaring from the ramparts of the Rocca di Losara.
Ask Guthric for the galley itself, and somehow he’d secure it. But with Silvano Atzeri alerted, his soldiers tramping the stairways to the prison.
Sparing the man he so deeply admired, Baynard preferred to tell him, ‘Your failings are those of Enrique de Vaca, old Guthrie. You’re not worth a damn in the water.’
* * *
Which left the crew of the Lampreda – none of whom could be trusted, not even by Renato Moretti – and the one-time poacher, the man who’d saved the Saxon at the foot of Tresset’s linn; the so-called ostler, the jaunty young joskin who swam like a fish and owed his loyalties to Falkan.
‘Me? You’re singlin’ me! Well what’s wrong with some of them shipmates? I don’t even know where we are ’ere! Why don’t you lower one of them down the shaft? Bony little bastards. They’d be out an’ back in no time!’
Enrique set his features in a cold, waxed frown.
Guthric gazed at the doorway, swivelled to stare at the joskin, the constable’s granite hands lolling as fists.
The crew of the Lampreda held their breath, Pino and Massimo watching to see how their handsome hero would perform.
Then Falkan said calmly, ‘Any moment now and the plump Atzeri will send for us – hang us with the dying of the sun, or shackle us to the walls of some seeping dungeon. The choice is yours, Master Quillon. It’s that, or make use of your skills.’
He stepped back, leaving the safeguard to decide. And only moved forward again when Quillon snapped at Guthric, ‘Well? What are you waiting for? Get your home-made clothes line around me!’
* * *
Falkan and Enrique took the strain, assisted by Guthric and the corsair. They lowered Quillon as fast as they could, if only to spare him the noisome stench of the shaft.
A Phrygian cap pulled low to conceal his harvest hair, he slid the first twenty feet without trouble. Then snagged his belt, the knotted cord slackening above him. The safeguard hissed for the men to haul in, take up the slack, wait for him to work loose from the outcrops of stone.
Too quickly free, he dropped five feet further down the chute of the latrine. But by doing so he wrenched one of the knots, the separate fabrics slipping, the clothes line coming apart…
Quillon fell. Jarred his spine on the angle of the shaft, then skidded to where the feared grille would bar his escape. Crash into a grille like that and…
But the base of the drop was open, the young man sprawling down a smoothed-out runnel of stone – out from the rocks – and flailing into the sea.
The waves lifted toward him, to throw him against the base of the Rocca di Losara. But the swell of the water had met its match in Quillon. He’d faced worse than this in the winter floods in Cornwall. Worse than this languid slap of the sea when he’d poached for fish, plunged below a mill race, ploughed through the rapids to escape the verderers who’d have so much liked to collar him – then hurry him off to be hanged.
Apart from the numbing ache at the base of his spine, the safeguard was in good enough shape to swim wide of the rocks. He turned on his back and extended a hand in the direction of the high, buttressed window.
With darkness falling, he couldn’t be sure if they’d seen him. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as if they’d be leaving. Acknowledge his departure or not, they’d still be in the prison when he returned.
Then it occurred to Quillon that maybe they wouldn’t; maybe they’d have been dragged out by Atzeri’s soldiers and taken up to the ramparts.
The thought of it made him twist in the water, dip toward the fishing village and stroke his way powerfully, urgently inshore.
* * *
It took him a while, the daylight now fading, to collect what he needed, skulking low as he searched the array of bright-painted craft hauled up on the beach.
An elderly watchman sat huddled over a brazier of glowing charcoal, his gaze on the embers, his lips around a straw-wrapped flagon of wine. He glanced up once as Quillon scooped a handful of small lead plumbs from the deck of a fishing boat, the safeguard crouching in silence until the watchman’s attention was once again turned to the coals.
Encumbered by rope and line, and one of the heavier lead weights, Quillon edged ca
utiously to the far end of the beach. There, he stowed the stolen equipment in the bed of a rowboat. Then, hidden from the watchman’s view by the assorted craft that littered the beach of Losara, he dragged the dinghy into the water.
An accomplished swimmer, he was nevertheless unpractised at the oars, and his progress was painfully slow as he drew the rowboat away from the shore. More time passed, the young man aware that time was also passing in the prison. Splash with the oars and he might be spotted from the beach. But dip them too gingerly, and he’d arrive beneath the window to see a yellow smudge of lanterns beyond the grille, the sign that Atzeri’s guards had come for their captives.
Guided by moonlight, he rowed toward the base of the Rocca di Losara.
The weak Mediterranean tide was on the turn, allowing the boat to sit stationary in the water as Quillon attached the plumb to the fishing line, coiled the line on the thwarts, then sent the weight flying upward at the grille.
It struck wide of the window and fell back in the sea.
He hauled the lead aboard, dragged on the oars and repositioned the dinghy.
Then he tried again, cursing as the plumb hit one of the bars, the fish-shaped weight rebounding before a dozen outstretched hands could snatch at it.
He tried again – realigned the rowboat – tried five more times before someone’s fingers clawed at the plumb, dragging the line inward through the grille.
Remembering, but almost too late, he groped on the stern board, tying the end of the line to the stolen rope.
It was whisked as if by magic into the air.
A sibilant voice hissed down to him. ‘Stay where you are… Stay off the rocks… Keep out to sea and wait…’
* * *
The first half-dozen to emerge from the shaft were members of Renato Moretti’s crew.
Panicked by the stinking claustrophobia of the drop, they yelped with fear as they skidded down the runnel to the sea.
Heedless of their terrors, the safeguard dragged them aboard, shoved them to the ends of the dinghy, then signalled in the direction of the window. Seven was enough for the rowboat to hold. He’d take them to within a few hundred yards of the village, deposit them among the rocks, then return for the others.
But it worried him that the moon was now bathing the scene with her jaundiced gaze…
* * *
Twenty feet from a tangle of scrub and volcanic stone, Quillon shoved the men overboard, telling them to get ashore and wait. ‘If you value your lives, you’ll squat there and be silent.’ Then he realised his language was not theirs, shrugged as they floundered to the rocks, and rowed back to collect the others.
* * *
Watching from the buttressed window, Falkan reported, ‘He’s landed them. It’s our turn to slip down now.’
Three more sailors were sent, unwillingly, down the shaft.
Then Constable Guthric, his shoulders tight against the sides of the chute, a grunt of horror reaching those in the prison as he found himself wedged in the angle of the drop.
There was nothing they could do for him, though it occurred to them all – to Enrique de Vaca, the corsair and Baynard Falkan – that if the constable was blocked by his bulk, so were they.
They heard him growl and felt the rope tighten. Then slowly, painfully, the Saxon climbed upward again, hand over hand until he was ten feet clear of the bend.
Gripping the rope high above his head, he released his hold and plummeted downward, trusting his weight would compensate for his girth.
Peeling his scalp on the rim of the outlet, the Saxon slithered to the sea. Quillon reached for him, grinning with admiration at the flinty old warrior. ‘You was never fashioned for this sort of thing, eh, Guthric? You’re a man who stands better on his feet, ain’t that so? Well, let’s get you aboard, before I ’ave to dive for you again.’
* * *
Enrique de Vaca descended, biting his lips in horror of the water. All the way down the shaft he found himself silently reciting prayers he’d thought long forgotten.
* * *
Baynard Falkan glanced around the prison, crossed to the door, leaned against the single, studded plate. Then he strode toward the latrine, waving the corsair ahead of him.
Moretti said, ‘Go first, and I’ll guard your descent.’
‘In a rat’s eye you’d guard it,’ Falkan dismissed. ‘What you would do is hammer on the door and howl the alarm. You get down first, Moretti. It’ll lessen your chances with Atzeri if he knows you joined the escape.’
* * *
Quillon ferried the second group to the hideout of scrub and rock that flanked the bay. He called to the sailors he’d already sent ashore, called again, then turned urgently to Baynard. ‘They’re supposed to be huddled there, m’lord. Waitin’ to be joined.’
But they weren’t. No sooner had Quillon rowed back to collect the others, than the six terrified crewmen from the Lampreda had fled, scuttling like rabbits from the slap of the surf, the already imagined pursuit of Silvano Atzeri.
* * *
Reduced to eight, the ill-assorted fugitives scrambled ashore. The Rocca di Losara loomed behind them, less than a quarter-of-a-mile away. At any moment they expected to hear the strident blast of a trumpet.
Peering upward, Baynard saw a small, thin cloud drift to veil the moon. He told his safeguard to release the dinghy, then watched as it was sucked out to sea, its slowly spinning departure concealed by the cloud. If one of Atzeri’s watchguards saw it from the ramparts, he’d assume it had broken loose from its mooring near the beach. At least until the escape had been discovered.
Moving close to Moretti, Falkan said, ‘You tell me you’ve friends in the village, is that so?’
‘More than I could count, Crusader. Apart from the pig who governs it, I’m very well liked in this place.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re everyone’s favourite, Renato. But could you get into the village and procure us some weapons? Anything we could fight with; gutting knives—’
‘Rely on it,’ the corsair assured him. ‘Keep hidden here, and I’ll be back with a clutter of blades.’
Baynard said, ‘You’re a liar in life, Renato, and you’ll lie with your dying breath. But remember this, my angelic sounding friend. I intend to reclaim Tremellion’s money. As for you, you doubtless hope to regain your ship. Play the traitor now, and we’ll both be disappointed. But work together and – well, you must think it out for yourself. Now go and find those friends of yours, Moretti. But don’t be so foolish as to tell yourself Silvano Atzeri’s among them.’
* * *
Had the rough terrain permitted it, the captain of the Eel would have rubbed his hands with satisfaction as he scuttled between the rocks.
His first idea was to contact one of the fishermen, promise the man enough money to buy his own fleet if he’d call his crew together, hoist sail and carry Moretti south-west the two hundred miles to Tunisia. The pirate was very well liked in the ports of Tunisia. One of their favourites—
But no. For he’d then lose the Lampreda.
Very well. So I can’t flee from Losara…
His second thought was to avoid the village, hurry instead to the castle and yell the alarm. If he told Atzeri the prisoners had escaped – and where they were – and that he’d been forced to go with them – well, surely the governor would see what a loyal ally he had in—
But no. For the sparkling swine would hang him anyway, the man who knew that Atzeri had seized Tremellion’s chest.
Very well. So I’d best steer clear of the castle.
It was not in Moretti’s nature to keep his word. What was a promise anyway, but sounds in the air? Yet, how to squirm out of this one, ignore what he’d told the Crusader, dodge Atzeri’s forty-foot rope and sail away on the Eel?
It couldn’t be done without the help of Baynard Falkan.
Very well. So I’ll fetch them their blades. Then stand aside when it comes, the time for killing.
Chapter Twenty One
&nbs
p; His exaggerated boast no more than that – yes, sounds in the air – the corsair returned to the rocky fringe of the bay with half-a-dozen gutting knives and some light, cane-handled tridents, simple harpoons used by the fishermen as they waded the shallows.
But it was better than nothing, and at least Moretti had come back, and done so quickly.
‘You’re not exactly cluttered with blades, Renato—’
‘Did I ever say—?’
‘Yes, but no matter. It’s more important we get away from here. Now, tell me. What chance Silvano Atzeri’s up there in his house, with those girls you supply?’
‘He’s bound to be,’ Moretti said shrewdly. ‘If not, he’d have come to gloat at us in prison. You should thank me, Crusader, that the pig has those pretty young sows to distract him.’
‘I should thank you with one of those knives for tricking us into Losara! But you and I can show mutual gratitude later. The thing to do now is make use of our fast evaporating freedom. Get up to that house and – I assume you know where it is?’
‘A mile or more back in the hills. Though I must warn you—’
‘Lead the way.’
‘it’s walled around, and with a gate—’
‘Allons-y!’
‘that’s closed against callers. And he doesn’t go there alone to his sty. There are four or five guards—’
‘Tell me on the way, Moretti. Tell me anything you like. But keep your shanks clear of this blade.’
* * *
Bruised and torn by their descent of the shaft, then further battered by the grey, volcanic rocks, the eight men threaded their way around the headland, through the deserted alleys of the fishing village, then up a series of winding sheep-paths that led to the hills.
The Edge of the Blade Page 19