Shadowheart (6 page)

“Be warned.” Lady Melanthe spoke quietly, standing at her shoulder. “Never say the truth of what is in your heart. Trust no one, Elena. Trust no one.”

The Knights-Hospitallers of Rhodes sweated in their black robes sewn with white crosses of Saint John, dark skull caps drawn tight under their chins, their tasseled rosaries clashing lightly against their swords with each roll of the waves. A militant order they might be, but they were no match for Countess Beatrice. The only things that seemed a match for Lady Beatrice’s piercing voice were the spaniel’s barking and Elayne’s memory of Raymond, which felt as if it grew stronger and more tormenting instead of dimmer as the distance between them grew.

The glare of the sun already heated the deck, reflecting a brilliant shimmer off the heaving surface of the Middle Sea. Elayne had departed England on Midsummer’s Eve, with great fanfare, aboard her own ship commanded by the sober Hospitallers, sailing with a convoy of thirty vessels bound for the cities of the south. Her bridal wardrobe filled the hold, along with gifts and strongboxes marked with the Duke of Lancaster’s seal and the King of England’s white hart. At the stern flew the red cross of Saint George and the white cross of Saint John, and atop the mast a pennant full twenty feet in length spread the green-and-silver colors of Monteverde across the sky.

None of this pomp moved the elderly Countess Beatrice and her testy spaniel. While Lady Beatrice had readily agreed to alter her mode of transport to Rome and lend her venerable countenance to Elayne’s protection—at a considerable increase in speed and comfort and no expense to herself—the Countess of Ludford seemed no more pleased than Elayne at the unexpected reversal in their positions. In spite of being on Christian pilgrimage, Lady Beatrice practiced unkindness as a virtue.

By the time they reached Lisbon, she had chased all of the handmaids to the lower deck, and insisted upon treating Elayne as her servant within the cramped confines of the ship’s castle. Elayne did not object to the labor; she was glad enough for some occupation on this dismal voyage, but nothing she did was done well or to the countess’s taste. In the night her lantern was too bright. In the day she did nothing to prevent the sun from overheating the cabin. It was Elayne who made the ship roll without mercy. She caused the spaniel to bark angrily at seabirds. Her step was too quick and her voice was too loud. When she tried to be slow and quiet, she was chastised for skulking like a snake.

It appeared that being a princess had no benefit at all that Elayne could fathom, beyond wearing a great deal of velvet and miniver in a climate that grew ever more sweltering, and being addressed by everyone but Lady Beatrice with a number of empty praises and compliments. She could not even write or read in the rough sway of the ship. Her only escape was into prayers of desperate penitence and petition to her guardian angel to turn back the months and let her become simple Elayne of Savernake again—humble appeals that were somewhat adulterated by the simultaneous desire to be turned magically into a falcon, fierce and ascendant, and fly away to some vague place that greatly resembled her own bed at home.

To no one’s astonishment the Countess of Ludford and the Knights of Rhodes did not accord. If the Hospitallers recommended a position midway in the convoy for the sake of safety, Countess Beatrice wished to sail at the periphery, to catch a
greater
breeze. If the knight-brethren suggested a Benedictine monastery as having guest lodgings that were clean and cordial in port, the countess insisted that she could not tolerate the inflated Benedictine order and could only rest easy with poor nuns. But the most painful disagreement arose from the fact that the famous fighting order of Saint John was divided into seven Tongues, its members drawn from all of Europe. The two Hospitallers appointed to command Elayne’s escort had the effrontery to be French, and no amount of hectoring or contempt could make them English.

Elayne spent most of her days holding a basin for Lady Beatrice. She saw nothing of the fabled Pillars of Hercules as the ship passed into the Middle Sea. Instead she was rinsing the countess’s wimple in tepid seawater and attempting to contrive some way to hang it to dry in the steamy cabin that rolled and creaked with every wave.

By this morning, five days beyond their last view of the Spanish shore, Elayne had long discarded the elegant fur and stiff layers of clothing that swathed the countess. She wore the simplest gray smock that she could uncover from her chests, with just a white scarf thrown over her head and bare shoulders for modesty. She had even put off her rings and dressed her own hair in a loose pair of braids wound up around her head and off the damp nape of her neck.

She gathered the remains of the countess’s breakfast and prepared to take it away. Lady Beatrice, in spite of claiming the seasickness held her prostrate, was sufficiently hale to finish the last of the Portugal wine and berate the Hospitallers for their incompetence. The knights stood just inside the stern castle, bearing the countess’s tirade with perspiring fortitude and a few scattered apologies, when they could insert one. As well they might, since this dawn had discovered the ship alone on the empty Middle Sea, with no sign of the convoy’s sails in sight.

No one seemed quite certain how this misfortune had occurred. Before Lady Beatrice had awoken, the two knight-brethren in command had hastened to assure Elayne, when she emerged for morning prayers, that a correction had been made in the ship’s compass. The convoy would be back in sight before midday, they reckoned.

The crusading Knights of Saint John were celebrated as the greatest fighting sailors on the Middle Sea, so Elayne supposed they knew well of what they spoke. Lady Beatrice was not as sanguine. Or at least not so forgiving, when furnished such an excellent opportunity for scorn.

“We can only pray to God that you are better warriors than seamen, when pirates fall upon us!” she declared. She bore a close resemblance to her snub-nosed spaniel in a temper, pushing up her lower lip while her jowls quivered with disgust. “ ‘Tis fortunate that the princess has chosen to dress like a miller’s wife—she, at least, may escape the notice of a pack of infidels who would relish nothing better than to abduct a Christian noblewoman such as myself!”

The knights murmured and bowed as Elayne moved past them out the door with her bundle of linen and soiled dishes. She thought there was a little shame in the glance that passed between them. Or it might have been amusement at the idea that any pirate could be unwise enough to abduct Lady Beatrice. Elayne gave them a sympathetic nod. She was in no haste to rejoin the convoy. If she could have an answer to her prayers, they would toss the compass overboard and miss her destination entirely.

She lingered below deck, helping her maids to rinse the plate in a great tub the sailors had hung from a beam and filled with seawater. None of them paid any mind when the first loud cry sounded overhead—it was common enough to hear the hails of the crew as they went about their business. Elayne swished a goblet through the saltwater. She paused as more shouts broke out. The sound of sailors’ feet thudded above them. They all looked up.

The deck tilted. Her maids squealed as the ship lumbered into a sharp turn, wallowing down with a force that threw them all flat to the floorboards. Dishes clattered as the tub swung aside and came back with the force of a huge boulder, pouring water and plate thunderously across the lower deck as the vessel rose and fell.

Elayne lay stunned for a moment. The countess began shrieking orders from the stern castle above. The spaniel yapped shrilly and the maids succumbed to paroxysms of terror. Elayne realized that her foot was trapped in a tangle of hemp rope and pewter-ware. She had to duck, pressing herself flat to the flooded deck as the tub came swinging in her direction, pouring water over her back.

It only wanted this, she thought, but her exasperation dissolved into a flash of panic as the cry of
“Pirate!”
ran through the ship.

Pirates! For an instant, Raymond’s name hovered in her throat, as if he could somehow save her, but instead an older guardian came, enfolding her in dark wings. She had no time to think or pray; she only knew that if she did not yield to the frenzy that surged up inside her, she could carefully relax her foot and wriggle herself free, sliding back from the reach of the massive tub.

She rose, drawing a deep breath. She clamped her hand over a maid’s mouth, stopping her wailing. “Hush!” she whispered. “Do you want them to discover us?”

The ship was lolling, the sails flapping loosely, but Elayne heard no sounds of fight or boarding yet. By fortune, none of the maids seemed to have been injured by the force of the swinging tub. They lay staring at Elayne in the dim light of the lower deck, their eyes wide.

“Conceal yourselves!” she whispered. “Under the bed-litter!”

While the maids scurried to find hiding places amid the bundles of straw and canvas, Elayne clambered up the ladder, pulling her wet skirts around her.

In the stern castle, the countess still screeched out hoarse directions while her spaniel barked. Elayne held on to the edge of the deck, craning out of the hatch. The commander-knights were nowhere to be seen, but the crew and men-at-arms lined the sides of the ship, crossbows and spears at ready. The green-and-silver banner of Monteverde hung limp, its fringed tip nearly reaching the deck. It fluttered and rose as the ship spun slowly, finding its way to the wind again. At first she saw no sign of any other vessel—then, as the ship’s sails filled, beyond the high structure at the bow she saw a bare mast. It too spun, the great spar rotating and tilting in the sun. The distant sound of men chanting drifted across the waves, a low hollow sound, terrifying in its regular deep timbre, as if fiends hooted their displeasure up from Hell.

Elayne gripped the hatch and bounded onto the deck. When she reached the mast, she could see a second pirate galley, the oars flashing, speeding toward them with a white spew of foam before it—as it rose on a swell, the apex of a vicious bow-ram split the air and then ripped through the water again, throwing spray aside like a racing sea monster.

As if in a dream, she stood with the crew and the soldiers and watched helplessly, the creak of the ship and the sound of the chants filling her ears. Their own vessel had regained some faint speed. The pirate galley seemed misaimed with its wicked prow—it did not pull straight toward the belly of the ship, but seemed to direct a line that fell away from collision with each passing moment as the sails collected wind and the ship added speed.

Elayne held her breath as the pirates came at them, clinging tight to a rope ladder at the mast, staring at the painted bowsprit above the ram, at the crossbows raised, at the ferocious bearded faces under infidel turbans—each instant seemed to unfold with a crystalline slowness; each second increased the chance that their ship would slip a hairsbreadth ahead of the galley’s strike.

At one and the same moment, roars of command issued from above her on the stern castle and from the deck of the pirate galley. The near oars on the galley swept upward as one unit, pointing toward the sky; at the same instant a flight of arrows hissed from the ship. A great sound rent the air, as if the heavens cracked open as the galley struck the ship’s huge rudder. Elayne fell to her knees with the impact. The pirate slid past under the stern amid a hail of screaming shouts, carrying the rudder away.

The ship still sailed, but it was like a wounded bull now between two wolves. The second galley came on swiftly, the chants a relentless rising tempo, unmindful of arrows flying as it swept alongside with men hanging from the spars and ropes. She saw that they were going to leap aboard in mass; she saw an arrow take one down; his body twisted as he fell like a broken bird into the sea.

The other galley was turning toward them again. Amid the war shouts, a heavy hand pushed her, half-dragged her toward the stern castle. Elayne stumbled inside just as the pirates began to leap aboard; the door slammed and she turned, scrambling for a bolt, a chest, anything to block it closed.

“Help me!” she screamed to Lady Beatrice. The old lady for once seemed to pay attention: she sprang with a startling energy to push one of their chests against the door. Elayne grabbed the other end as the spaniel scrambled aside. Together they hauled the heavy wood against the entry and gasped and heaved and flung the other baggage on top.

Elayne sat against it, her back to the muffled sound of the battle outside. The two of them huddled down behind the barricade of wood, waiting in the suffocating heat. Even the spaniel was quiet, panting from its hole under the sleeping berth. She could hear the infidel’s urgent shouts, and a renewed roar of command from directly above them. Splashes and thumps and incomprehensible cries followed.

Lady Beatrice reached out and took her hand. The countess’s fingers were trembling, but she gave Elayne a hard squeeze and a nod. In her other hand, she held up a tiny dagger, one of the pretty jeweled toys that court ladies wore on their girdles. With a grim look, the old lady made a thrust in the air, as if plunging the knife into an attacker, and then pressed it into Elayne’s hand. “Don’t tell them who you are, girl.” she whispered harshly.

For the first time, Elayne felt a tinge of admiration for the countess’s fierceness. She accepted the dagger soberly. Crossing herself, she sent a prayer to her enigmatic guardian angel, begging that he not desert her now.

As if in answer, a strange hush fell over the ship. Elayne stared straight ahead at the one tiny porthole in the stern, listening. Through the bulkheads and the door and the sound of her own heart beating, she could make nothing of the faint voices from outside. She stiffened as the chant of the galley oarsmen seemed to draw near again, but then— amazingly—it began to fade away.

Elayne lifted her chin a little, peering over the countess’s bowed head. Through the porthole, beyond the chaos of the cabin, she caught just a glimpse of bright blue water and the white sails of another ship.

For some time Elayne waited. After many minutes she began to grow a bit impatient. If they had repelled the attack, then it would be benevolent of their own escort to come and inform them of it. She felt a strong urge to climb over the baggage and present herself with a demand to know what went forward. But the countess caught her arm tightly as she moved, and Elayne lapsed back.