The Bloodstained Throne (2 page)

When they had embarked, they discovered Fingar already had four other paying passengers, who had joined
Patrick
in Dublin. These comprised an uncommunicative Saxon and his servant who were secretive to the point of rudeness; a loquacious Breton named Juhel; and a Norman called Paisnel who had been lost overboard several days before.

During his career as a soldier, Geoffrey had spent a fair amount of time on ships, mostly in the Mediterranean Sea, travelling at the command of his liege lord, Prince Tancred.
Patrick
, however, was like no other. Normally, tents were rigged on deck for passengers, but Fingar claimed such clutter would interfere with safety. His fares had the choice of eating and sleeping on the open deck or crawling on top of the Irish leathers in the holds.

Geoffrey was blessed with a strong stomach, although even he had been sick in the monstrous seas in the Channel. His fellow passengers fared worse. Vitalis, the silent Saxons and the servants spent most of their time in the hold, vomiting what little they managed to eat. Geoffrey suggested they might feel better away from the odoriferous hides, but they groaned they were too ill to move. The longest conversation he had had with the Saxons – the squire was called Simon, but he had no idea of the master’s name – comprised them ordering him away when he tried to help them.

Vitalis’s women – each separately introduced as his wife – were more robust and made regular forays to the deck, where they stood clutching the rails and screeching at the size of the waves. They were often joined by Brother Lucian, who flirted outrageously despite the fact that he appeared at times when he should have been reciting his holy offices. It had not escaped Geoffrey’s attention that Lucian had not prayed when they were in danger, although every other soul on board had done so with increasing desperation.

Paisnel and Juhel had also been largely unaffected by the elements. Paisnel was the more likeable, a serious, sober senior clerk in the service of the Bishop of Ribe. His friend Juhel was a parchment merchant, and when he was not chatting to his fellow passengers, he talked to his pet chicken, a pale-brown bird with wicked eyes.

But, Geoffrey reflected sadly as he huddled with his companions in the biting wind and stinging rain, trying to regain his strength after the desperate struggle ashore, he could see none of them on the beach.

‘What shall we do?’ asked Bale eventually. ‘We cannot sit here all day. It is too cold.’

‘We should wait for the captain to say something,’ said Ulfrith. ‘He is in charge.’

‘Not any more,’ argued Bale. ‘Besides, all he is interested in is rescuing what he can from the waves before
they
move in.’

Geoffrey looked to where Bale pointed and saw a tremor in the vegetation behind the shore. People were gathering, watching the survivors but making no attempt to help.

‘Locals,’ said Ulfrith uneasily. ‘They are hoping we will all die, so they can claim what is washed ashore. Folk like them killed shipwrecked mariners when I was a boy.’

‘They had better not try anything with us,’ said Roger grimly, fingering his sword.

Geoffrey was glad they had all donned their armour. Mail was not total protection against arrows, but it would give them a chance to fight back, should the villagers be rash enough to attack two fully armed Norman knights and their squires.

‘They will,’ predicted Ulfrith. ‘But not yet – they are not stupid. They will wait for nightfall, when we fall asleep from exhaustion.’

Roger scowled. ‘They are already growing bold. Look at that fellow with the green hat there. He has been watching us from behind that tree since we first reached the shore.’

‘We should offer to help Fingar deploy sentries,’ said Geoffrey. It would not be easy to protect themselves in the dark, but it would be foolishness itself not to try.

The captain, however, was unreceptive to Geoffrey’s suggestion to move inland and find shelter. Fingar was a short, powerful man with red hair and a scar that ran from the centre of his forehead, down his nose and across his lips, to end at the cleft in his chin. It was perfectly symmetrical, and Geoffrey wondered how it had happened.

‘I am not playing milksop to passengers,’ Fingar growled, his attention on the seething waves and those of his men who still floundered in them. The rest sat in deflated, sullen groups around their salvage. ‘I am busy.’

‘Busy doing what?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘Nothing is coming ashore in one piece, and smashed planking and soaking pelts cannot be of value to you. We should make our way to the nearest settlement for—’

Fingar rounded on him with a fury that would have made most men take a step back. ‘You do not know what you are talking about! We need to gather every scrap of timber or leather that washes ashore if we want a chance of buying a new ship. And my obligations to you finished when you reached the shore, so you can make your own way.’

‘We do not need your protection,’ said Geoffrey irritably. ‘But you can see from here that the locals have arrived and are just waiting for the right time to attack. None of us will be safe once night falls, so it is better to pool our—’

‘No one will dare attack me,’ said Fingar with great finality. ‘Now bugger off.’

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode towards the thundering surf, where two of his men were struggling with a barrel. Its side was stoved in and its contents lost, and Geoffrey wondered why they were so determined to have it. Disgusted and bemused, he headed back to where Bale and Ulfrith were packing sodden belongings into the saddlebags, aware that the silent locals had edged much closer.

‘No!’ howled Bale, whipping around suddenly, knife in hand. ‘Get away!’

By the time Geoffrey reached his companions, the hapless villager was staggering to safety, trailing blood behind him. The other villagers, clutching a haphazard array of cudgels and pikes, watched tensely, ready to flee if anyone should give chase.

‘That will warn them to keep their distance,’ said Roger, watching Bale wipe the blood from his blade with a handful of seaweed.

‘It will warn them to be careful,’ countered Geoffrey. ‘The fellow in the green hat is now even closer – so is that large man by him. Fingar will be in trouble tonight if he does not post guards.’

‘There is still no sign of our fellow passengers,’ said Roger, again scanning the turbulent sea. ‘I can only see crew.’

‘What a pity Lucian is dead,’ said Ulfrith with undisguised malice. Normally affable, Ulfrith had taken strongly against Lucian, whose courtly manners had made him feel gauche and loutish in front of Lady Philippa. He heaved a melancholy sigh. ‘Poor ladies! They were so lovely. I cannot imagine why either married Vitalis. He was old enough to be their grandfather.’

‘Perhaps he
was
their grandfather,’ suggested Bale. ‘I did not see him demanding his conjugal rights the whole time we were aboard.’

Carefully, he began to pack away the ink pots, pens and parchment that had been in the bag Geoffrey had saved, although his disapproving expression indicated he thought his master should have taken the other one – containing clothes and a small store of gold coins.

‘He was seasick,’ explained Ulfrith. ‘Although I suspect an hour or two with Philippa would have cured any sickness of
mine
.’

‘And I could have managed a bout with the other one – that Edith,’ said Roger salaciously. ‘She was a fine, strapping wench, with plenty of meat for a man to—’

‘There is Juhel!’ exclaimed Geoffrey, pointing suddenly along the beach.

‘So it is,’ said Ulfrith, squinting. ‘An undertow must have pulled him away from the rest of us. He is lucky – few men live once undertows get them.’

Bale stood to wave and catch the parchmenter’s attention. ‘He has the cage that held his pet chicken, although I cannot imagine the bird is in it.’

Geoffrey glanced down at his dog, glad it had survived, but thinking again with sadness about his horse. He wondered if
Patrick
had floundered because Fingar’s greed had led him to pile her with more cargo than was safe, or if she had simply been poorly loaded.

Juhel arrived, breathlessly relating his brush with death. He was stocky, with a wide, smiling mouth and prominent eyes reminiscent of a frog. Geoffrey wavered between liking him for his readiness to laugh and distrusting him because he had caught him out in several lies. The knight was amused to note that not only was the chicken in the cage but it was alive, albeit bedraggled.

Geoffrey tuned out the parchmenter’s gabbling and stared pensively across the heaving waves. Another casket, badly smashed and with its lid missing, rolled on to the shingle, where it was seized by crewmen. He looked up at the sky, gauging how much daylight was left. A glance behind showed that the villagers were inching forward again, all clutching weapons. Was there time for him and his companions to reach a friendly settlement with them before dark? And how easy would it be to find another ship that was eastward-bound? He realized he must have spoken aloud, because the others were gazing at him aghast.

‘You intend to try again?’ whispered Ulfrith. ‘After we narrowly escaped with our lives? God is telling us
not
to travel east, and only a fool would disobey His wishes!’

‘Only a fool would have gone in the first place,’ muttered Roger. ‘And we are bigger fools for going with him.’

‘Then stay,’ said Geoffrey shortly. There were often violent storms in the English Channel, and he did not imagine for a moment that God had engineered one for his benefit. ‘I will go alone.’

‘How?’ demanded Roger. He nodded to the saddlebag in Bale’s hand. ‘You did not bother to save your gold, and you have no horse.
How
do you propose to reach the Holy Land?’

He had a point. Geoffrey’s little manor on the Welsh borders was experiencing a lean period, but his sister – who managed the estate in his absence – had managed to scrape enough together for his journey. He could hardly go back and ask for more, especially since Joan had not wanted him to go in the first place. Neither had his wife – Geoffrey had recently been forced into a political marriage in the interests of peace. But he had a burning desire to travel east again, and it had not taken many weeks of life in the country before the yearning had become too strong to ignore.

‘You should return to Lady Hilde, sir,’ recommended Bale tentatively, when he saw Geoffrey had no reply to Roger’s remarks. ‘She is not yet with child.’

Geoffrey gaped at the effrontery, but Bale suddenly lowered his bald head and vomited a gush of seawater, and the knight supposed he had spoken out of turn because he was not himself: Bale was normally diffident to the point of obsequiousness. Meanwhile, Roger was more concerned about their current predicament than his friend’s obligations in the marriage bed.

‘Fingar is incompetent,’ he declared. ‘His ship was a paltry, leaking basin, not fit to bob down a river. I could tell just by looking that it would sink in the first puff of wind.’

‘Then why did you not say so in Bristol?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘You were happy when we sailed – especially when you learned he might be a pirate. You entertained high hopes of joining him in his work, so you might share the spoils.’

‘Pirates!’ spat Roger. ‘He and his crew are no more pirates than my mother.’

Geoffrey glanced at him. Roger had some very odd relations, so it was entirely possible that Roger’s mother – long-term Saxon mistress to the corrupt and treacherous Bishop of Durham – might take to the high seas for booty.

‘
Irish
pirates,’ said Bale, looking evilly at the seamen and fingering his favourite dagger. His weapons were his most prized possessions, lovingly honed to a vicious sharpness on a daily basis. ‘And not even a Christian part of Ireland. They are infidels who worship graven images and drink the blood of babies.’

‘Oh, really, Bale!’ exclaimed Geoffrey irritably. ‘They are just—’

‘I want them to pay for my horse,’ interrupted Roger, working himself into a temper. ‘I know they have gold, because I saw it.’

‘Where?’ asked Bale eagerly.

Roger pointed with a thick finger, indicating a sturdy, heavily secured box about the length of his forearm. It stood in the middle of one of the salvaged piles. ‘I saw them counting what was in it just this morning. If they had been watching their sails instead, we would still be afloat.’

‘It is thanks to Fingar’s fine seamanship that we survived at all,’ argued Geoffrey. ‘A lesser sailor would have lost the ship out at sea, where we would all have drowned.’

‘Regardless, they will pay for my horse,’ vowed Roger.

Meanwhile, a small sailor with a pinched, mean face became aware that Roger was eyeing the chest. Donan was Fingar’s second-in-command, and he muttered something to his companions as he pushed it out of sight. Geoffrey did not like the looks that were exchanged and was about to tell Roger to be careful when Juhel suddenly cried out, jabbing his finger towards someone struggling through the waves.

‘It is that rude Saxon,’ said Ulfrith. ‘The one who never bothered to tell us his name.’

‘His servant is with him,’ said Bale. ‘Simon.’

But the Saxons were in difficulty. Geoffrey tore down the beach and into the churning waves, fighting to stay upright as the water surged around his legs. Too late, he realized he should have removed his armour and surcoat first. Then a crashing breaker tossed the pair within reaching distance.

The Saxon was swimming strongly, so Geoffrey flailed towards Simon, but the Saxon grabbed Geoffrey around the neck as he passed. Geoffrey tried to push him away, but the Saxon’s grip was a powerful one. He glanced at the man’s face, expecting to see panic or terror, and was startled to see it calm and determined.

‘Bear me to the shore,’ the fellow ordered imperiously. ‘I cannot swim another stroke.’

Geoffrey struggled to be free of him. ‘Your servant needs help.’