by Alex Dylan
He opened his eyes. The horn lantern suspended from a hook in the ceiling lilted like a fiddler’s elbow. The darkening night unpicked the sky, dropping blue shreds across the ocean. He exhaled heavily and closed his eyes again.
Huge white horses surged through the waves, manes flying, ears back, eyes rolling, running at speed; he felt the wind rush past him, snatching at his ears. He was on the boat with the sail at full canvas, flying across the water, alive with the speed. He was running with the cattle, charging with them, pressed against them, held close. He was embraced, smelling the scent of safety and sleep, loved and secure, gentle hands stroking his face.
The wind blew against his cheek, flicking his eyelashes. His eyes felt heavy as he opened them. Melisande’s warm breath caressed him. He knew she was awake without turning to her. He wrapped his arms more closely around her, drawing her to him and turned to look at her, searching for her. He kissed her, whispering to her with the suspiration of the air lifting the sea-foam. She kissed him, tentatively at first, growing in intensity like the tide on the turn; exploring his mouth with her tongue. He bit her lips softly, teasing her mouth into his, feeling her breath on his neck and the warmth of her belly pressed against him.
She arched the curve of her back as he kissed her throat, burying her burning breasts in his mouth, her dark hair brushing his face. Heughan slid an arm between her legs, raising her slightly as she wrapped her legs around his back, higher and higher, until she was clinging to him and he pushed into her with the feel of her wrapped tightly around him.
She spoke to him, talking to his ears and his eyes, fuelling his desire. She drove him harder and harder, making him work, arousing him, wanting him and he her. He tasted her whole body in completeness. He felt himself disappear and crest again until her sex sated his desire. Perspiring, he rested his head on her breasts and felt her shaking, consumed, alive and free for that moment of everything.
Much later, Melisande stood beside Heughan on the deck of the cog, both of them staring over the side at the dark water lapping the tar spots. The ship was turned towards the harbour mouth, awaiting the next push of the tide. Drizzle tinged the hopeful face of the unborn day with sadness. The squalls were moving rapidly landwards and blurring the line between sea and quay; belatedly, she realised it was her own tears distorting her vision.
“I have to take him back to his homeland,” Heughan blurted out. “I can’t give him up to the sea. It never wanted him in the first place.”
Melisande nodded with a conviction she did not feel and kept her eyes averted. Still, she said nothing and the silence rocked between them.
Eventually, Melisande spoke, in flat strong tones that mirrored the woman she was, “Pain does not come from the present. The deepest pain comes from the depths of memory, from the past. You cannot change the past. Neither yours nor his.”
Heughan was quick to reply, too quick to keep the irritation out of his voice, “I don’t want to. I just want to have some peace, just a little peace for us both. I’ve made my decision and I’m going.”
“You do understand that I cannot come with you?” Melisande asked.
“No, I don’t,” Heughan stated baldly. “I’m not running away, Mele. There’s nothing left here for me, and I need to believe I have a future.”
He looked out to sea. The silence ebbed back between them.
“I thought we had a future together,” he said softly when he eventually spoke again. “And now you’d leave me for that bloody book? It’s gone, I tell you. Roddy must’ve switched it, kept it for himself, because he thought it would save him. I wish it had. You almost made me believe,” he said, his voice tinged with bitterness.
Melisande smoothed his hand tenderly. “I also told you that if you were looking for absolutes, you would be disappointed. Perhaps you also remember that? Heughan, if there’s a chance my journal is here, then my life is still bound to this place. It’s not perfect but it’s been my home for a long time.”
“And mine,” he chided.
Melisande smiled with her half-bow lilt, “You are not beholden in the same way. My freedom comes with a price. Yours has been given to you. Use the gift! ‘Carpe diem,’ Heughan. Seize the day and seize your own future.”
“Tell me what the future holds,” Heughan said abruptly. “Show me in the cards and I will believe you.”
Melisande pulled out her Tarot cards from where she was keeping them close and offered them to him but he shook his head.
“Pick a card for me,” he instructed.
Melisande closed her eyes and asked the question, shuffling until she was sure. She cut the pack and turned the card. The Fool.
Heughan laughed briefly and cut it off. “Am I the fool, or just a fool who follows the fool?” He stared at the card. Melisande’s voice eased softly into his angry thoughts.
“The Fool strides blindly on a journey into his future because he is still focused on the past, reflecting on what is behind him with his mirror. He wants to understand what led him to this point but until he can face himself, he can never see where he is here and now, nor let wisdom guide him.”
Heughan shook with suppressed emotion, holding her to him with the strength of the high tide. Melisande spoke softly, “You’ve already made your decision, Heughan. You need to find yourself. You need to be the man you were always meant to be. You have to do that alone. You have to find your own path.”
“Are you sure?” he said, turning her to him, looking at her with his magician’s eyes, soft and stern at the same time.
She worried her lower lip. “Not any more. But if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”
Heughan smiled humourlessly and pushed her away from him towards the land. “Perhaps I don’t want to know.”
Melisande opened her mouth to make a reply but saw Mac approaching.
“It’s a day I thought I’d never see, m’lady,” he beamed. “They always told me a witch couldn’t cross water, but we’ll prove ’em wrong, aye?”
She smiled at the big man, putting her hand into his gentle paw and giving it an encouraging squeeze as she went past him and into the small cabin. Mac followed her passage with a frown of puzzlement deeply etched in the weathered lines of his face. He smiled benevolently in her direction and then wiped his face blank as he turned to Heughan.
“Well, lad,” he began, giving him a hearty slap on the back which rocked Heughan onto his heels. “Aluino’s aboard and we’re all set. We’ll be off the Man soon enough. The ‘Deasura’ should be there within the week. Your passage is arranged. Nothing to do now except wait for the tide and charm the ladies.”
He peered over the sides of the boat into the waves. Heughan resisted the temptation to join him, half-expecting that this time he would see the mermaids Mac was convinced were there as he started humming gently under his breath.
In the half-grey of the early dawn light, Melisande woke with languid confusion. Heughan lay on his side, turned away from her, breathing peace deeply. She moulded herself to him, burning with his sleeping heat. Melisande slowly reached out to him, wanting to caress him. Heughan shifted under her touch. She stroked soft fingers along the thick muscles of his neck, tracing his bulk down to his shoulder and the scar naming his arm – the permanent reminder of death averted. She might have to wait a long time for Heughan to tell her that story.
Aggressive gulls above the boat shrieked rudely. The day was begun.
Heughan hated goodbyes and yet she just couldn’t bear to wrench herself away without explaining herself to him. Why did it matter so much to her that he should understand? She tried to calm her mind and see forwards with clarity. There was nothing but the swirling grey fog of a muddled mind full of possibilities.
"Water is my element," she thought ruefully. "You would make me the well from which you could draw daily and so stifle us with addled domesticity. The tighter you squeeze me, the faster I trickle from your grip, until you are half-crazed with thirst and we are both destroyed. I would run dry
and you would grow to hate me because you would think me possessed instead of seeing that I had been slowly ebbing away. I am not a well, I am a fountain. I want to be your elixir of life, to be every inspiration and every possibility.
"You are air. The invisible and intangible power of the gathering storm which would destroy me. Heughan the Hawk, you should not be pinioned. So soar, find yourself, live true to your nature."
For a long while further, Melisande lay twined around Heughan and let the tears flow as she remembered Rodrigues’s words to her: ‘A fish and a bird may fall in love but where would they build a home?’
She had an answer for him, much good that it would do her: ‘On the horizon, where the sea touched the sky.’
She stroked Heughan’s cheek gently. “Fly, my hawk,” she whispered into his dreams. “Find me under a different sky.”
Melisande dressed silently and resolutely, risking one last kiss, as she took the small book from the tangle of Heughan’s other baggage.
She let her hand pause in passing on the box containing all that remained of the Spaniard. Taking a breath, she opened the hinged lid to look on the gloved hand with its defining ruby ring. She stroked the severed wrist tenderly, feeling the smooth flesh and frowned.
Death. Death preceded every beginning. The Fool. New beginnings. She pocketed the ruby ring and closed the box gently.
“Stay alive,” she pleaded to the air. “Find me. And I will find you.”
Melisande borrowed a horse from the inn stables, riding only far enough to crest the mount from where she could see the hesitant fledgling that was Mac’s boat nestled at the curve of the breakwater. She hoped it would unfurl and take flight without falter. A raw breeze whipped salt at her back like a tanner curing a hide.
Across the rise and fall of the approach road ahead of her, she watched the banners of the troop of horse unfurl and tumble towards her. Many were emblazoned with trios of huge black birds, making it look as though a whole murder of crows had lifted themselves from the Crowtrees Woods and flocked to Maryport after her. Or perhaps they were pursuing their namesake, Heughan Corwin?
They were close before she picked out Mark A’Court’s rose emblem at the head. The men were floured with dust from the ride, but she knew him from the smug self-assurance with which he paced himself and his mount, exuding unhurried briskness. He’s expecting me to be here to meet him, Melisande thought, wondering how the courtier knew her mind better than she did herself.
The troop slowed. “We are ill-met by Maryport, my lord,” Melisande said brazenly. “Leastways, ill-matched. You honour me with this show of strength and I am all on my own.”
“In that case, Lady Melisande,” answered Mark A’Court, “I am delighted that we are able to provide such a familiar company for your onward journey. It is the king’s command that you should continue to enjoy his protection.”
Melisande heard menace in his voice. A rider pulled his horse aside and moved in line with Mark A’Court so that he could be plainly seen.
“Greetings, my lady mother,” he said.
Mark A’Court smirked at her reaction, “I find reunions so touching. I trust you have some interesting explanation for me? No, please don’t feign ignorance,” he said, spearing her with his saurian gaze.
Melisande laughed lightly with a confidence she didn’t possess. “Once again, my lord, you have me at a disadvantage. I have no need of pretence, when, in truth, I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.”
Melisande kept her eyes fixed on the young man ahead of her, searching for a sign of herself in him as Mark edged his horse over to her and whispered, “The book, Melisande? ‘The chatelaine holds the key?’ Quite literally, no?”
“You have a conflict of interests, my lord, and it would take a snatchier diplomat than you to discern the truth of the matter,” she said, watching in satisfaction as her words made him recoil briefly.
Mark A’Court chuckled darkly. “You are the second person to recommend diplomacy to me. Amusingly enough…” he began but got no farther, as a grey destrier muscled through the bannermen, pushing them aside to right and left, disrupting the conversation.
“Allow me to present His Grace the Duke of Rohan, court diplomat, with whom I believe you are already acquainted,” Mark A’Court smirked. “He has quite the mastery of truth.”
Melisande was shocked into silence as the burly man picked up her hand, flourishing it to his lips with his courtier’s pretence and that winsome smile which fell just short of his eyes.
“The detailed explanations will have to wait for some other time,” he said in the familiar lilting accent of Lord Ravensdale. “You have a book that we are all keen to see. Hand it over now.”
Melisande could only acquiesce. She delved into the saddlebag and produced it. Lord Ravensdale took it from her and quickly separated the leather cover of her journal and the imposter within. He handed the cover back to her but kept hold of the book.
“What’s yours is yours,” he said with a wicked grin. “And what’s mine’s, my own.”
He flipped through the first few pages and exhaled deeply. “Your information was correct, my lord. This is an old heresy concerning His Majesty’s parentage and rights of governance. For the life of me, I can’t see what all the fuss is about.”
Mark A’Court took a moment to consider the book Ravensdale passed to him. He searched for the bookplate. “If this book is neither yours nor Lady Melisande’s…” he tailed off and read the inscription. Ex Libris Walter Ralegh Chevalier de Chatelain de Jersey. “Walter Ralegh, Governor of Jersey. Oh that will interest His Majesty.”
Lord Ravensdale turned back to Melisande. “Now, my darling, why don’t we conclude this business so we can be on our way? Supposing you tell me what you’ve done with that bastard who forces me to call him ‘son’. Where’s Heughan Corwin?”
Epilogue: Somewhere Towards the Edges of the Map
Aboard the ‘Deasura’, Heughan was half aware of the sounds drifting into his consciousness. He pulled the blanket tighter to him but the breeze filled his nostrils with a rush, forcing his eyes open. He felt the motion and knew they were moving quickly under sail, the tight sound of the canvas and the backbreaking strain of the mast cutting them along through cold grey water. He scanned the clutter of the deck; leather pails, folded nets, wicker cages of chickens, unusually quiet. He couldn’t see the sky but he knew there was rain in it by the pewter light encasing the whole scene.
They had been at sea five days now; the sun was rising in a different sky. Orion faded over their shoulder by night and they were heading southwest. The wind had nothing but salt in it, not a scent, not a sound of land. He wasn’t yet tired of staring at the slow-moving lurch of massive blocks of sea. This was a sea with a depth he had never seen. It must sink to the very core of the earth, he thought. He was in awe of the scale, the never-ending-ness of it.
He shook the cold out of his legs and pulled himself up by the side rail. There was the sky dipping into the sea at regular intervals. There was the sea swallowing them and throwing them up to the same beat.
He stood on the prow of their little wooden boat, hand carved in the Isles by settled Vikings. He thanked their skill in choosing the right timber, locking it together in their own way to make this sturdy, world-weary craft. The wind was in his back, the clouds seeped across the whole sky just above his head and he strained for signs of mermaids, monsters and most of all, dry land.
To venture out to the edge of the earth was an urge from within him. Yet now, for the first time, he felt easy in a way he couldn’t understand.
Why did the rhythm of the sea suit him so?
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