Hawk Quest (48 page)
Raul fell into his pit and snored for as long as it took the sun to circle the earth. Wayland woke every few hours to feed the young falcons. Hero watched him at his task. He kept all except the white adult cooped in darkened wicker cages. The haggard perched bareheaded on a block by his bed and showed little fear of man or beast. On one occasion when the dog strayed too close, she raked its flanks with her talons and sent it scooting off like a scalded pup.
Vallon and Garrick had stayed at the harbour to guard
Shearwater.
They hired a gang of shipwrights to patch her for the next voyage. High pressure had moved in, bringing limpid blue skies. Now it was the lack of wind that delayed the convoy’s departure.
The company held their homecoming feast in a field by the harbour. Hero and Richard had to keep revising the scale of the commissariat as it became clear that everyone who lived within two days’ ride intended to join the festivities. The bishop accepted an invitation and sent a request that the company take the two German monks back with them to Norway. The first guests turned up in the afternoon and they were still dribbling in after sunset. Many of them had brought tents and a touching number pressed contributions on their hosts. Some brought their own wood for the cooking fire.
A dozen sheep were butchered and relays of volunteers turned the mutton over a driftwood hearth the length of a room. Another great pile of wood had been built solely to provide light and cheer. In the purpling dusk the bishop called for silence and delivered a short homily, followed by prayers for the travellers who would soon be braving the ocean’s wrath. His words rang out over the bowed heads of the congregation. When he’d made the sign of the cross and sat
down, Raul lit a brand from the hearth and set the torch to the bonfire. A cheer went up and the feast commenced.
Platters of mutton were borne to the bishop and the other honoured guests. The orderly ferrying of meat gave way to a free-for-all, men hacking off portions ad-lib. People Hero had never seen before pressed drinks on him. Signs of drunkenness became apparent. Somewhere on the fringes of the feast a fight broke out. Hero looked anxiously at the bishop, but his lordship turned a blind eye and ordered a second helping.
Chains of sparks flew up from the bonfire. Hero looked up to where the sparks expired and contentment welled up in him. He looked around, wanting to share his happiness.
Syth was passing around a narwhal tusk. ‘It’s proof against poisons and epilepsy and pestilence and, oh, every ill known to man.’
Wayland told a riddle of his own making.
I flew the skies, I sailed the sea,
I kept my master warm and dry.
One day he left me, went north by moonlight.
A fellow picked me up, took a knife to me and stripped me almost naked.
He plunged me into a black well.
Only when he took me out still weeping could I tell my story.
‘I hope it’s not obscene,’ the bishop said.
Wayland smiled and shook his head.
Richard stared upwards in a seizure of concentration. ‘I know the answer. Don’t say anything.’ He clapped his hands. ‘A goose quill!’
Hero watched Raul dancing with a buxom widow, romping around her with the clumsy formality of a trained bear. Behind them a group of horsemen wafted out of the dark. Six riders with faces bloodied by the flames advanced stirrup to stirrup and halted on the far side of the fire.
Vallon had already risen. ‘They won’t make strife in the bishop’s presence.’
Vallon had told Hero how enfeebled Drogo was, but he’d cropped his hair and filled out and looked much as Hero remembered him. Beside him was a handsome young man who could only be Helgi.
Vallon had brushed aside Hero’s questions about the cause of the dispute, but Garrick had told him it must have involved Helgi’s sister. Many of the other guests had noticed the arrival of the riders and were drawing in to see what it meant.
‘The invitation stipulated no weapons,’ said Vallon. ‘I won’t ask you to join us.’
The men remained in their saddles. ‘We’re sailing first thing tomorrow,’ Drogo said. ‘We’ll be picking up my men before going on to Norway.’
‘Looks like you’ve had a wasted journey.’
‘There’s a long way to go before it ends. I’ll have you by the heels yet.’
Their stares bored into each other, then Drogo wrenched his horse around and the party retreated into the darkness. Vallon clapped his hands. ‘On with the celebrations.’
Day was beginning to crack open when the convoy cast off and rowed out of harbour, the ships’ wakes scribing the calm surface. A mile from shore the convoy caught a breeze and slowly bore south.
Vallon breathed out. ‘That’s the last we’ll see of them.’
‘Drogo will be waiting for us in Norway,’ Hero said.
‘Let him wait. We’ll be stopping only long enough to drop off the monks.’
Hero watched the ships grow small.
Vallon clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Forget him. We have work to do.’
Preparations for their voyage took three days. Wayland recruited a gang of children to trap birds for the falcons. The company would be taking the horses and they loaded enough fodder and water for a voyage that might take two weeks. They repaired the sail and rigging, recaulked the hull, fitted the rudder with new lashings of walrus hide.
It was after midnight when Raul told Vallon that everything was shipshape.
Vallon looked at the whorls of stars. ‘In that case, let’s be off. Hero, fetch the monks. Raul, get the horses on board.’
At the time of night when most people sleep deepest,
Shearwater
crept out of harbour. Only the harbourmaster was there to see
them cross the bar. He held a burning torch. ‘Come back soon,’ he called.
‘We will,’ Hero shouted.
He knew that he’d never return to Iceland except in thought and memory, but memory went deep and thought cut across space. He watched the flame on the shore recede until it was no more than a mote, then he turned to face the starry universe with a flutter of excitement mingled with dread.
They rounded the Reykjanes peninsula next evening and set course south-east. During the night Hero took a sighting on the Pole Star to fix their latitude. Next morning dawned misty, the sun floating through layers of vapour like a dwarf red moon. Cloud-dappled skies by noon. Two days more saw the Westman Isles falling astern. The wind blew light from the south-west. If it held, it would carry them north of the Faroes.
Emerging into another tranquil dawn, Vallon was woken by Raul’s shout.
‘Icelandic ships ahead!’
Vallon made his way forward and studied the flotilla picked out against the rising sun.
‘What do you make of it, Captain?’
‘They’re not waiting for us. They must have lost time picking up Drogo’s men.’
‘Do you want me to change course?’
‘No need. We’ll lose them sooner or later. Until then, we might as well tag along. Their navigators know the sea-road better than we do.’
Raul glanced at him. ‘Hope it ain’t out of order, Captain, but what did you do to rile Helgi?’
‘Well, telling can’t do any harm now. By chance I happened upon his sister while she was bathing in a hot spring.’
‘Naked?’
‘Not a stitch.’
Raul whistled. ‘I ain’t laid eyes on her. Is she as beautiful as they say.’
Vallon smiled. ‘Lovely as Venus, but too hot-blooded for me.’
They shadowed the convoy for two days, settling into a relaxed shipboard routine. Vallon practised his English, went over the accounts with Richard, played chess. Hero monitored their position and held stilted conversations with the monks. Wayland and Syth fed the falcons each morning and removed the soiled moss from under their perches. Garrick tended the horses in the hold. In the long
intervals of lying about doing nothing, the company listened to Raul and Wayland’s account of Greenland and its wonders.
‘Oh, I wish I’d come with you,’ Richard kept saying.
They saw no sign of the Faroes and quit looking after the fifth day. Wisps of cirrus heralded a front moving up from the south. Around noon on the sixth day, the horizon disappeared behind a curtain of black cloud trailing a frayed and dingy hem. Raul and Garrick upturned the ship’s boat across the stern thwarts and lashed it down. Wayland and Syth carried the falcons down to the stern half-deck. The monks also retreated below. Vallon remained on top with Raul.
The sky darkened. A few drops of rain pecked on the deck and the ship curtseyed before the first gust of wind. A slate-grey downpour advanced hissing across the sea and engulfed them. Vallon ran for the boat and squeezed under with the others. The rain fell in torrents, peening on the hull and bubbling over the deck. Vallon watched Raul steering through the deluge like some hairy Neptune. He grew chilled and stiff. He stuck it for as long as he could, then made his way to the helm.
‘I’ll take over.’
Shearwater
dipped over the crests with ponderous grace, spray bursting over her bow. The rain pelted down, soaking Vallon to the skin. The four layers of thick woollens he wore didn’t keep him warm, but they provided enough insulation to maintain his body in a just-about bearable equilibrium. At dusk Wayland relieved him and he crept to rest under the boat. He woke in pitch blackness to half a gale. Flurries of rain rattled against the sail. He crawled out and groped his way to the rudder. Wayland was still at the helm.
‘How’s she standing up to it?’
‘We came through worse on our return voyage.’
Another burst of rain spattered against the sail. Bile rose in Vallon’s gullet. He huddled on a thwart, blinking into the sluicing dark, sniffing up dewdrops on the end of his nose. The point came when he could no longer keep his stomach corked. He rose heaving and spewed over the side. Down he sank again until the next fit of vomiting, and so it continued all night.
At break of day he voided his gut one last time and stared apathetically at the dull sky. The rain had slackened to a scudding drizzle. The
convoy was nowhere within sight. Raul was back at the helm. Vallon listed across the deck. ‘Are we on the right course?’
‘No. We’re being blown north-east.’
Vallon sighted along the combers. Changing course would put them beam on to the seas. Even if they weren’t swamped by a big one, the ship would take a hammering. ‘This won’t last for ever. Run with it.’
Two days later the wind was still blowing and Vallon was beginning to worry about running out of ocean. ‘The Norway coast can’t be far ahead,’ he told Raul. ‘Organise a bow watch.’
Towards evening the wind tailed off and the sun flared briefly in the west. A rent opened in the clouds and stars sparkled in the void. Somewhere a phantom moon. It had grown much colder.
When Vallon took the next watch, the sea was beginning to settle and the sky to the north was clear. He searched for the Pole Star and found it high overhead. ‘Hero.’
Hero peered out from under the boat.
‘Work out our position if you can.’
Hero tried a dozen times to take a reading. ‘It’s no good. The ship’s pitching too much.’
‘What’s your best estimate?’
Hero studied Polaris. He checked the horizon. ‘We’re a long way north of where we should be.’
‘How far?’
‘I don’t know. Five hundred miles. Maybe more.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll try again when the sea’s calmer.’
Hero returned to bed. Vallon raised his eyes to Polaris. The star stood much higher than it had the night they left Iceland. The waves rolled northwards in an endless herd.
Shearwater
had been running before the wind for more than three days. They could easily have covered five hundred miles. He stared over the crests. So where was Norway?
The night passed and a vague grey light rose in the east. The swell was settling and only the occasional white crest broke on the waves. Vallon examined his puffy and quilted fingers. He dabbed at the cracks in the corners of his mouth, massaged his rheumy eyes. The rest of the
company emerged with blotched and haggard faces, their clothes covered with mildew, stinking of wet rot. Raul resembled an inmate from a pest house – his mouth black and scabby, eyes webbed with blood, a hideous carbuncle erupting from his forehead. Even Syth looked a fright. Last out were the monks, their chins and habits streaked with vomit.
The company tottered about. Raul stood in the bow chewing on a dry fish spread with butter. Suddenly he was taken by a choking fit. Vallon thumped him between the shoulders and he ejected a wad of pulverised cod.
‘Ship,’ he wheezed, pointing south.
The others hurried over. ‘That’s Helgi’s vessel,’ said Wayland.
Vallon drilled a finger into his ear. ‘Are you sure?’
Wayland’s voice dragged on phlegm. ‘I recognise the patch on the sail.’
‘Do you think they’ve seen us?’ Hero asked.
‘Must have.’
‘He ain’t stopping,’ said Raul.
‘Follow him.’
The day brightened, sunshine dazzling between clouds. Gulls mewed around the ship and Vallon spotted driftwood. Away to the south a range of pale cloud held station.
‘That must be Norway.’
Raul cocked an inflamed eye at the sun. ‘It’s in the wrong place. Norway should be east of us.’
Vallon checked the position of the sun, looked at the land again. ‘Hero, bring your magic fish.’
Hero placed the compass on a thwart and the company watched its needle spin and settle. The evidence was incontrovertible: the coastline lay due south of them. No one spoke. As well as being exhausted and hungry, they had no idea where they were.
At midday Syth served up gruel and coarse grey bread furred with green and black mould. Vallon pared away the rot and tried to take a bite. His jaws made no impression. He threw the bread to the gulls and sank onto a thwart. Wonky comets and asteroids floated across his vision.
‘Sir?’
