Once Upon a Winter's Night (45 page)

“No,” said the interpreter, looking at Jordain.

Camille sighed.

Hirota then said swift words, his haughty eyes never leaving Camille, and the intepreter said to Jordain, “Lord Hirota says, he has never seen hair of gold before, and he wishes to know if you have any more such as she.”

Jordain looked at Camille, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, though there was interest in his eyes as well. “Are there?”

Camille blushed, but said, “If I had a fan, I would snap it shut.”

Jordain turned and said to the interpreter, “Tell Lord Hirota she has closed her fan.”

After the interpreter spoke, Hirota growled and looked away from Camille.

 

“At least he didn’t ask about your sparrow,” said Jordain, “though I have no such reticence.”

Camille smiled. “Scruff is my travelling companion.”

Jordain waited for more, yet Camille added nought.

They walked on down the docks, passing ship after ship, some lading cargo, others off-loading.

“Your port seems quite busy.”

“Aye, for ’tis the season for trading. We have fine wool and wine and cognac and brandy and other such to export, while the ships bring goods from afar.”

“And that’s why the
East Wind
is in port?”

Jordain nodded.

“Then tell me, are there any other ships herein named after the winds?”

“Certainly none currently in port as great as the
Higashi No Kaze,
though there are three others who might sail in one day soon.”

“What about ships that are not as great, yet named after the winds?”

“Why is it you want to know?”

Camille sighed and said, “I search for my true love Alain. He is gone to a place east of the sun and west of the moon, or so did Lady Sorcière say. And I was given a riddle to solve, a riddle which will lead to him, or so it is I hope.”

Jordain sighed. “Your true love, eh?”

“Indeed. I love him more than life itself.” Camille’s voice dropped. “It is my fault he is missing.”

“There is a tale here to tell,” said Jordain, “and I would hear it. Yet the riddle first.”

Camille glanced up at Jordain then said:

“Ah,” said Jordain. “Now I see why you seek ships named after the winds. Let us go to the harbor office, and we shall see what ships are harbored that answer to such.”

 

Registered in port there were currently nine ships with names, some of which needed to be translated, that evoked the winds—
Breeze, Windsong, Squall, Little Cyclone, Sea Breath, Gale, Storm Runner, Villion’s Bluster, Wind Walker—
and a tenth craft named
Puffer,
though Jordain thought this last but a small boat named after a fish.

 

Over the next two days, Camille and Scruff visited every one of these craft, yet none of the masters knew where the place she sought did lie.

“I thought not,” said Jordain. “Most were coastal runners, and not ships that sail across the five oceans and the seven seas.”

“That many?” asked Camille. “—Oceans and seas, I mean.”

“Those are the ones in Faery I know of,” replied Jordain, “though ’tis said there are more—some claim nine oceans in all, and as many as eleven seas.”

Camille stood silent for a while, looking over the harbor, and then she said, “When first we met, you spoke of three other great ships named after the winds, ships that might come.”

Jordain nodded. “Aye, they are the
Hawa Kibli,
and
Aniar Gaoth,
and the
Nordavind.
Fear not, Camille, if any come across la Grande Mer—the Great Sea—and into port, I will send a runner to fetch you. Where are you staying?”

“At the Le Marlin Bleu, but any runner you send must at times find me elsewhere—at mapmakers, for example. Yet I will tell the clerk at the Blue Marlin where I am bound, and the runner can ask him. Oh, and in the evenings, the runner will find me at La Lanterne Rouge, where I will be singing.”

Jordain’s eyes widened in surprise. “The Red Lantern? But, Camille, it is quite an unruly place, and though there are women who work there, I think they are not your sort.”

Camille said, “I will only be singing, Jordain, not, um, not, well, you know. Besides, I have been told that every ship’s captain and crew sooner or later comes to the ’Lantern, and as I did in Les Îles, I shall ask each audience if anyone knows whither lies the place I seek.”

“Bu-but—” Jordain began to protest, yet Camille stopped him with a thrust-out palm.

“As I said, Jordain, I will simply be singing.”

Jordain sighed. “When do you begin?”

“This very eve.”

Jordain shook his head and turned away, peering out over the water. Then he pointed. “There goes the
Higashi No Kaze
.”

As she watched the red ship tack toward the harbor entrance, Camille frowned and said, “Her sails are not like the other ships I’ve seen leaving port.”

“Aye, they are not,” said Jordain. “But for that matter, the whole ship is different, her bottom is quite flat with but a small keel, and the rudder is long and angles out, somewhat like a lengthy oar. Her sails are called lugsails and have four corners down the outside border; they’re made of coarse cotton and braced flat by long wooden strips running from the haul to the edge. And she’s equipped with oars for the crew to use when the wind does die. No, not like other ships is she, yet quite seaworthy in all, they say, though I myself wouldn’t want to be aboard her in a heavy storm.”

They watched as the great ship made her way to the mouth of the harbor and then on out to sea, where she turned to the larboard and soon vanished behind the up-sloping hills to the headland, her strange sails the last to disappear.

Camille sighed. The
East Wind
was gone, along with her yellow-tan crew.

 

There came a soft tap on the door, and when Camille opened it, a huge man filled the frame, his hat in hand. “Miss Camille?”

“Yes?”

“Ma’am, I’m t’ go with y’ t’ th’ Red Lantern.”

“Sieur?”

“I’ll be waitin’ down below.”

He turned to go, but Camille called out, “Wait!”

The big man turned back, brushing the shock of red hair out of his pale blue eyes.

“Who are you, and why are you going to the Red Lantern with me?”

“I’m t’ see that no one does y’ wrong, Miss Camille.”

“Does me wrong?”

“Aye. ’At’s what th’ harbormaster sent me t’ do.”

“Jordain.” Camille’s word was a statement, not a question.

“ ’At’s right. Mister Jordain.”

“And if I need no protection . . . ?”

“Oh, you will, miss,” averred the big man. Then his mouth formed an
O,
as if he just remembered something. “And, miss, my name is John, though most know me as Big Jack.”

“Well, Jacques, I—”

“No, no, miss. Not Jacques. Jack. And it’s Big Jack at that.”

“Well, um, Big Jack, tell Jordain that I thank him for his offer, and I thank you as well, but—”

Jack held up an admonishing index finger. “No, no, miss. He said you’d like as not try t’ say no, but he gave me instructions, he did, and I’ll not take a no.”

Camille sighed and said, “Well, Jack, er, Big Jack, I suppose it can’t harm if you tag along.”

 

After the mêlée at the Red Lantern was over, and after the three men who had tried to carry Camille up the stairs had been smashed unconscious by single blows of one of Big Jack’s massive fists, Camille no longer objected to him being about. In fact, after but two nights, his very presence meant that when Camille took the stage a quiet would descend, for Big Jack would stand up in the center of the throng and glare all ’round; and a hush would fall over the boisterous crowd, each person there wondering if he was the one Big Jack was getting ready to maim. And then Camille would begin to sing, and Big Jack would smile and sit down, to a great sigh of relief. And her singing brought laughter and tears to the eyes of captains and crew alike, and even the ladies of the Red Lantern would pause to listen, some weeping softly. And now and again, as she had done in Les Îles, Camille would sing to a wee sparrow.

As before, at the conclusion of every performance, she would ask if anyone there knew of a place east of the sun and west of the moon, and though sailors and masters looked at one another, none could tell her where such a place might be. . . .

... And thus did eighteen days pass, eighteen blossoms withering to vanish since Camille had been in Leport. Twenty-one blossoms remained on Lady Sorcière’s staff, new splinters and cracks yet riving the stave with the coming of each new day.

 

“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!” cried the lad. “The harbormaster sent me to fetch you. He says to tell you the
South Wind
has come.”

Over Scruff’s chirping objections, Camille snatched him up from his breakfast of grain, and she grabbed up the staff and followed the lad out from the common room.

Down to the docks she hastened, following the trotting lad, and he led her to one of the piers, where was berthed a ship fully as large as the
Higashi No Kaze
had been.

Yet this ship had a pointed prow, and her lines were long and low, though a high deck arose at the stern, and a smaller one at the bow. She was three-masted, and brown was her color, her furled sails brown as well. Her name was written on her prow in serpentine letters, letters which Camille could not read. Her crew was dressed in long, flowing robes, their faces dark brown, some nearly black beneath their colorful turbans. At their waists they bore sharply curved swords as well as curved and keen-pointed knives.

Jordain stood on the dock with a small, dark man dressed in pale brown robes, sandals on his feet. He had black hair and a black beard, as well as a flowing black moustache below his quite aquiline nose. His black eyes lit up as Camille approached.

Jordain said, “Lady Camille, this is Captain Anwar, master of the
Hawa Kibli.
Raiyis Anwar, I present Lady Camille.”

“
Chp!
”

“And her sparrow, Scruff.”

Anwar laughed, and, with a great flourish of his right hand, he deeply bowed. Camille curtseyed in return.

Then Anwar smiled, white teeth showing. “Lady Camille, Harbormaster Jordain tells me you seek a place?”

“Yes, Master Raiyis, I do.”

Again Anwar smiled. “My lady, ‘raiyis’ is the word for ‘captain’ in my native tongue. Please, call me Anwar.”

“And you, sieur, please call me Camille.”

Anwar made a small gesture with his hand, somewhat like the flourish of his bow. “Now, about this place you seek.”

“All I know of it, Captain Anwar, er, Anwar, is that it lies east of the sun and west of the moon.”

Anwar shook his head. “I know not where such a place is. In fact, unless it moves, unless it cycles on a crystal sphere of its own, somehow gliding between those spheres upon which the sun and the moon do ride, I do not know how such a place can even be.”

Tears brimmed in Camille’s eyes, and Anwar took her free hand in his and said, “I am sorry, my dear. Yet do not yield all hope, for strange is the realm of Faery, and your place might be real after all.”

Then Anwar turned to Jordain. “Is the
Aniar Gaoth
or the
Nordavind
in port? Or the
Higashi No Kaze
?”

Jordain shook his head then added, “The
Higashi No Kaze
sailed away some days past, and Lord Hirota did not know where the place she seeks might lie.”

Anwar nodded. “Then perhaps it is written that the Elves will know . . . or the iron-bearing Dwarves.”

“Elves? Dwarves?” asked Camille.

Anwar nodded. “Jordain told me of the riddle you have: ‘There are winds that do not blow, but flow across the sea.’ Camille, many are the vessels in Faery named after the winds, but only four of these are great ships of the sea. If any would know where this place you seek might be, it would be the captains of such. Yet, alas, the master of the
East Wind
did not, and I, master of the
South Wind,
know not either. But there are two ships left: the
Aniar Gaoth
—the
West Wind
—is a vessel with an Elven crew; her master may know, for he has travelled wide, as has the Dwarven master of the
Nordavind
—the
North Wind.
”

Camille gestured at the harbor. “But Captain Anwar, those two you name, they are not here.”

“Nevertheless, Camille, it is the trading season, and they will come soon or late.”

“Then let us hope they come soon,” said Camille, “for if they come late, it will not matter.”

 

Another fortnight did pass, fourteen more blossoms gone, when came the word that the
Aniar Gaoth
had docked. Again Camille rushed to the pier, following the lad that Jordain had sent, Big Jack now striding after, for he had decided Camille needed protecting in the day as well as the nights at the Red Lantern. And so, down to the docks they did go to where the Elvenship lay.

She was long and low and slender and sleek, her bow knife-sharp, her stern club-blunt, her hull a deep blue. No fo’c’s’le nor stern castle did she bear, but instead low decks fore and aft. And her three masts were tall and raked back, with yardarms wide and many. She would carry an enormous amount of sail, all of it now full-reefed, though Camille could see they were pale blue and with a sheen like that of silk. She was half-again longer than either the
Hawa Kibli
or the
Higashi No Kaze
had been.

As to her crew, Elves were they all—alabaster skin tinged with gold, tilted eyes in narrow, high-cheekboned faces, tipped ears, and lithe grace. They were armed with glittering swords, and horn-limb bows and deadly arrows, and long-handled, gleaming spears. Silks they wore, and satins, and they spoke in a lilting tongue.