The Marsh King's Daughter (42 page)

'But it is the truth. I have never seen you look so ... so radiant.' He brushed at a stray wisp of copper-red hair that had escaped her wimple.

'You have never seen me so fat either,' Magdalene said with a dismal look at her body.

Her need for reassurance was constant. Aware of the reasons, Nicholas gave it unstintingly. 'It makes not the slightest difference to me.'

She searched his face. 'Truly?'

'Truly,' he said, and kissed her.

A loudly cleared throat interrupted their embrace. Looking up, Nicholas encountered the sardonic gaze of Stephen Trabe, fellow ship-owner and veteran of the battle of Sandwich. Magdalene smoothed her gown and demurely folded her hands beneath her belly. Nicholas rose to his feet, his hand outstretched in greeting, but his eyes wary. He and Trabe were sufficiently acquainted to pass the time of day, but there was no deeper friendship. Nicholas could still see with too much clarity the moment when Trabe decapitated Eustace the Monk with no more conscience than beheading a chicken. Instinctively, he stepped in front of Magdalene, shielding her with his body.

If Trabe noticed the gesture, he gave no indication. Returning the handgrasp, he nodded his appreciation of the nef. 'A fine vessel,' he said, his gaze examining her with lupine thoroughness.

Nicholas agreed with him. 'We sail on the tide,' he added. 'Is there some business you wish to discuss?'

Trabe stroked his thumb along the golden beard at his jaw. 'Aye, there is, but you might want to hear it in private.' His eyes flickered eloquently towards Magdalene who was watching the men with curiosity. 'Nay, you will want to hear it in private,' he emphasised.

Nicholas glanced at Magdalene too, then, signalling that he would not be long, drew Trabe away to the prow of the vessel.

Trabe rested his forearm on the intricately carved and painted post and continued to thumb his beard. There was a gleam of relish in his expression. 'I thought you might be interested to know about a certain contract I was offered last month.'

Nicholas raised his brows in a question and waited.

'I might have accepted it in the old days before I had gainful employment from the King,' he said. 'I would not have you think that I have developed a soft underbelly with the passing years.'

'Of course not,' Nicholas said without expression. Gainful employment from the King for men such as Stephen Trabe was no more than a legitimate licence to play pirate. The notion that the man at his side possessed the smallest soft spot was untenable.

Trabe smiled darkly. 'But these days I'm selective about my "kills".'

Nicholas stiffened at the world 'kills'. 'The contract you were offered was for my life?'

'A man with a bright red beard and a common manner approached me on the matter,' Trabe said with a nod. 'I had never met him before, but I would know him again. He was acting on behalf of his employer, but of course he did not say who that was. The sum offered was high, and I was tempted to take it on.' He looked at Nicholas with shrewd, hard eyes. 'Someone wants you dead.'

There was a hollow sensation in Nicholas's gut. All the old memories flooded his mind. Surely after all these years the scene that he and his father had witnessed at Rouen was no longer a threat. It was John who had required their deaths, and now John himself was dead. 'Were you told why?'

'They never volunteer and I never ask. Once you start knowing things, the job begins to mean more than just money.'

'Conscience, you mean?'

Trabe snorted. 'You're treading on dangerous ground, de Caen. That is not a word I recognise.'

But nevertheless he possessed one, Nicholas thought. 'Then why come to me with this warning?'

Trabe shrugged and looked uncomfortable. 'We were part of the same group at that battle with the French. I know you and I know of you too well to do the job with an impartial mind.' He cleared his throat and ran his thumbnail along the contour of one of the carved dragon's heads. 'I was on the ship that sent your father's to the bottom of the sea. I do not want to be on the one that destroys you.'

The hollowness widened to encompass all of Nicholas's being. 'What?' he said stiffly. The old memories became as jagged as knives.

'I wasn't the captain,' Trabe said quickly. 'Jesu, I was only a lad of fifteen summers myself, but I was there.' He tensed his body. 'Strike me and I'll strike back twice as hard and you'll never hear the tale,' he warned as Nicholas clenched his fists.

'God's eyes, what do you expect me to do at such news, stand here with the calm of a monk at prayers!' Nicholas cried.

Below them, Magdalene struggled to her feet, her expression concerned. With a half-turn of his head and a wave of his hand, Trabe indicated her to stay where she was. 'I expect you to act like a madman,' he replied, 'but I am telling you for your own good to fetter yourself.'

Nicholas closed his eyes and drew several slow, deep breaths. 'Christ,' he muttered, digging his fingers into his palms, seeking the control not to leap at the other man's throat and not sure that he was going to succeed. At last, he raised his lids, and looked at Trabe. 'Tell me.'

'We had orders to take and sink the Peronnelle. Although he acted through an agent, we knew those orders came from King John because our captain had dealt with him often before. Booty we could have, but there were to be no survivors. It was essential that their master, Alain de Caen, did not survive. We were paid to do the deed and keep our mouths shut.' Trabe paused for a moment to stare out over the water. Then he sucked a deep breath through his teeth and said without looking at Nicholas, 'We caught her in mid-Channel and rammed her through the bows. Then we swung grapnels across and before she sank we hauled off her cargo and killed her crew as we had been instructed.' His tone was emotionless. 'It was a duty and I've done the same a hundred times since and with more responsibility. What your father had done to encounter John's wrath, I do not know, even as I do not know the reason why someone seeks your death now.'

Nicholas sat down abruptly on the bench below the prow. 'I knew he was killed,' he said hoarsely. 'Some said that the Peronnelle went down because of bad seamanship or a sudden wave, but I knew my father better than that. He never made a single mistake on a ship in his life. He died for knowing things about King John that could have brought down the Kingdom.' He glared at Stephen Trabe. 'Now you have the gall to tell me that you were one of his murderers.'

Trabe spread his hands and returned Nicholas's look with eyes that were as hard as stone. 'Judging me will not bring your father back. He was an enemy of the King, that is all we were told and there was no reason for us to know more. I do what I do and make no excuses.'

'How do you sleep at night.'

Trabe gave a mirthless grin. 'Like the dead,' he said. 'God on the Cross, I came to warn you, not to chew over old bones and be made to justify myself. I am beginning to wish I had accepted that contract.'

'You expect me to thank you after what you have said?' Nicholas snarled.

'I expect nothing,' Trabe snarled back. He turned away. 'Just look to yourself and remember who warned you.'

Trabe had reached the wooden gangplank before Nicholas caught up with him and, grabbing his arm, turned him round. The sailor's muscles tightened and one hand reached to the handy dagger at his hip.

'No,' Nicholas said urgently, 'I need to ask a boon of you.'

Trabe's eyebrows rose towards his hairline. 'A boon?'

'Yes, I . . .' Nicholas paused to rub his face. 'I am not ungrateful for the warning and I acknowledge the spirit in which it was given.' They were difficult words to say. There was a part of him that wanted to see Trabe's dagger flash and answer with similar violence, but he held it down because it was a response to what had happened in the past and the future was more important. 'If anything does happen to me, I ask you to ensure that Magdalene is brought safely to the house of my senior master, Martin Wudecoc, in Boston.'

Trabe glanced over his shoulder at Magdalene, who was standing again. 'I am not a nursemaid,' he growled.

'Not even for payment?'

Trabe drew himself up, his expression tightening.

'It's not an insult, it's an offer,' Nicholas said. 'A contract to preserve life, if you will. If my life is threatened, then hers could be too, and that of our unborn child.'

Trabe pursed his lips.

'I do not have time to make other provision; I sail with the tide.'

'As a boon then,' Trabe said reluctantly. 'But only until you make other provision.'

'Thank you. And if you should discover who seeks my death, I would pay well to know.'

Trabe smiled darkly. 'You might do better to put your money on a counter-contract of your own and see to whose lifeblood it leads,' he said and, without waiting for a reply, departed.

Nicholas watched him with troubled eyes and thought of what had been revealed. It was not as if a wrong had been righted, but there was a certain bleak relief in having his suspicions about his father's death confirmed. There was also the added worry of knowing that he might soon be joining him.

'Who was that?' Magdalene wrapped her arm around his and looked up at him, seeking explanation and reassurance.

'A friend,' Nicholas replied with slight misgiving at the use of the word.

'What did he want?'

Nicholas shook his head. 'To unburden the conscience he claims not to have,' he said. He turned to watch a labourer loading barrels of mead into the hold. He wondered if it was coincidence that a red-bearded man was apparently contracting for his death when it had been such a one who had struck down Maurice de la Pole outside a Boston alehouse. The notion was worrying. Perhaps he ought to have another word with Stephen Trabe after all.

The voyage to Normandy was smooth and without incident. There were no knives in dark corners, no cups of poisoned wine, and the only ships that hove into view during the passage were small fishing nefs and merchant craft. On edge, Nicholas studied the horizon, but it yielded nothing more sinister than a line of smudged blue joining a paler line of sky.

He tarried a night in Barfleur and made ready again to sail on the next high tide with a cargo of the superior Normandy cider in the nef s shallow hold. Barfleur itself was notorious as the port out of which the first King Henry's White Ship had sailed one winter evening, struck a rock as she cleared the harbour, and sank, taking half England's nobility with her, including the heir to the throne. Over a hundred years had passed since the happening, but it was still recalled with grim relish by the inhabitants. Every vessel that entered or left the harbour sailed close to the spot of the tragedy. Tales were told of a ghostly white ship that was seen each year in November, casting off to her doom.

A shiver ran down Nicholas's spine as the Empress sailed out of Barfleur on the evening tide. She was a white nef, just like the fated ship, and Nicholas already felt a dread affinity with the wreck fathoms below, for his own father had died at sea.

As the sun dissolved into flowing ribbons of purple and gold, the Empress cleared the harbour; her bows sliced the spray of the open sea and her red sail developed a taut belly of wind. Tom, the lookout, kindled the lanterns at prow and stern, and she gleamed through the night like a ghost.

Nicholas listened to the hiss of the sea beneath her keel and, with his eyes on the lantern's swing, wondered afresh who was willing to pay for his death. It might be because of the past, but he thought not. If the instruction had come from the Crown, Trabe would not have warned him. And as far as he knew, his fellow sea-traders were friendly rivals rather than deadly enemies.

At the back of his mind was a notion that he did not want to explore, but nevertheless it niggled at him. If Robert Willoughby ever found out about himself and Miriel, there was no telling how the merchant would react. Willoughby was said to be ruthless in his trade dealings, and he had certainly set out to woo Miriel with single-minded purpose, but whether he had it in him, beneath that affable tawny exterior, to kill was difficult to judge. If he did, who could blame him? And if he didn't, then Nicholas had no inkling who might wish him sufficient ill to deprive him of his life.

Sighing heavily, he abandoned his thoughts and sought the company of his crew.

The attack came an hour later when the sky had lost all trace of light and the gathering clouds of a rain squall had obliterated stars and moon. Two ships, lanternless, dark of sail and hull, hove out of the night like birds of prey and, even as Nicholas's lookout bellowed a warning, the grapnel ropes hissed out and pronged iron claws chewed gouges in the Empress's graceful white sides, slewing and stopping her in the water.

There was no time to break out the oars or make a run before the wind. Nicholas seized an axe and chopped through one of the grapnel ropes, but already more were being thrown like strands from the mouth parts of a spider. Arrows whined overhead and plummeted with devastating effect. As Nicholas chopped another rope, the crewman beside him screamed and fell, two feathered shafts quivering in his body. Nicholas cursed. The Empress was a sitting target, unable to move, bright as the moon.

He flattened himself against the deck, his heart thudding like a fist on a drum. A voice with a heavy French accent bellowed across the water, demanding surrender.