The Marsh King's Daughter (44 page)

Trabe shrugged. 'It happens,' he said laconically, not meeting her eyes.

'And why were there no survivors? Why did they not abandon ship and take to the row boat?'

'Perhaps there was no time; perhaps they were overcome by smoke. Not being there, we cannot know, and it is pointless to speculate.' Closing the subject as firmly as his mouth, he had escorted her to the home of Martin and Alyson Wudecoc, clearly keen to be rid of his obligation. Ever since then she had lived in a world devoid of any feeling except despair. When she slept it went away and so she had spent most of her time courting slumber in the loft chamber, the shutters closed against the intrusion of the day. There was no one to whom she could talk. Alyson Wudecoc was a shoulder to cry on and they had shed tears together for Nicholas's loss, but Magdalene did not know her well enough to make of her a confidante. Martin was still at sea, so she could not talk to him of her doubts and fears or ask him to speculate with her as Stephen Trabe had refused to do.

Then, last night, her labour had started. She had welcomed the gripping, physical pain, had seen it almost as an extension of her suffering. Now, with her baby in her arms, and her womb still cramping as it strove to expel the afterbirth, her grief and joy were almost unbearable.

'How is the little one to be named?' enquired the midwife as she tugged gently on the cord, encouraging the afterbirth to descend from the womb.

'Nicholas, for his father and his father's memory,' Magdalene said in a cracked voice, and put the now warmly wrapped baby to suckle at her breast. As the tiny mouth tugged at her nipple, the pains gathered and cramped in her loins and rose to her heart.

Nicholas knew that the cold would kill him before he could drown. He had seen it happen to men before; in the winter it was a matter of minutes. How long he had been in the water he did not know, but he could scarcely feel his limbs. He knew that he was pushing his arms and legs in the semblance of a swimmer's stroke, but he could no longer feel the sea against them, and each thrust of effort was more difficult than the last.

He thought about giving up, about letting the sea take him down into dark, green sleep. The idea grew seductively in his mind. Why fight? Then he became aware of his father swimming beside him, an enormous sea-washed gash in his ribs. The image matched him grimly, stroke for stroke, forcing Nicholas to battle on.

'You bastard, let me go,' Nicholas gasped weakly, and immediately coughed as he gulped yet another mouthful of sea-water.

'You wanted to die in your bed, did you not?'

Nicholas heard the words in his head and knew that they must be his own. His father was a vision, a trick played by his mind as he fought for his life.

He considered defying the spectre and just letting himself go under, but the even rhythm of its stroke, imagined or not, forced him to plough on.

'Good boy,' his father said in the same tone of patronising encouragement he had used in life to both his dogs and his son. 'Not much farther now.'

Farther to what? Nicholas wondered, not daring to open his mouth and enquire lest he swallow more sea. Certainly not to shore. The attack had come in mid-Channel, more miles from land than he could swim. To death then, to becoming a mind-shadow like the image in the water at his side.

And then he heard it, the soft dip and plash of oars, the clunk of wood rotating in the rowlocks, and the muted sound of voices. Briefly he debated whether to cry out. Happen-chance he had swum in a circle and returned to his would-be killers. He reasoned that death by a single dagger thrust would be little different to death in the water. If both were imminent, he would take his chance. Drawing breath, he used the last of his strength to shout for aid.

The sound of oars stopped. He yelled again, choked, spluttered, shouted. There was a muttered debate, and then he was answered in rapid French. The oars splashed once more and out of the darkness rowed the dripping outline of a small nef, her strakes painted the colour of blood. A lantern gleamed on the low wash strake and by its light the pale ovals of bearded faces searched the water.

'Here!' Nicholas bellowed, waving his arms. 'Here!'

Someone cried and pointed. The small vessel came around and Nicholas swam the last few strokes to the extended oar. They hauled him aboard as if landing a large codfish and stooped over him in consternation. One of their number continued to search the water with the lantern, then swung back to address Nicholas.

'Was there anyone else with you?'

His cheek pressed to the cold planks of the deck, his body riven by shudders of cold, Nicholas spewed sea-water and weakly shook his head. 'No one.'

'I could have sworn I saw two of you . . .'

'If you did it was my father,' Nicholas croaked, 'but he's been dead twelve years.' He slumped. Dimly he was aware of them stripping him naked and swaddling him in coarse, dry blankets like an infant. Rigors shook him as if he were in the throes of a seizure. The oarsmen took up their places again and began steadily to row. Closing his eyes, Nicholas slept with an exhaustion so deep it was almost death.

It was dawn when he woke, his eyes opening on tangled skeins of pink and grey cloud undershot by the fire of the rising sun. The prow of the small nef, rising and falling through shallow troughs of sea, was pointed towards a hummock of land on the horizon. Her sail had been broken out, and the bold green and gold stripes surged taut-bellied with wind. He stared up at the snapping canvas and licked his lips. The taste of dried salt burned his tongue and revived his memory. He had no idea who had rescued him or where he was, but they were the reason he was not dead.

Very gingerly, he eased himself to a sitting position. The nef was crewed by four men and a youth in early adolescence and they were going about their tasks with the cheerfulness of men who were not only homeward bound, but confident and at ease in each other's company.

It was the boy who noticed that Nicholas had stirred, and pointed it out to the tall, fair-haired sailor on the steering oar. The man nodded, gave care of the oar to the youth and stepped down into the well of the vessel with the rolling gait of an experienced seaman.

'You had a fortunate escape,' he addressed Nicholas, his flint-coloured eyes narrow and shrewd. 'Very few men are granted the grace of being plucked from the water if they are wrecked or fall overboard.' He spoke French but with a strange accent that Nicholas was unable to place.

'I know, and I am as grateful to you as I am to the Almighty,' Nicholas replied.

The man grunted. 'Don't count your blessings quite so soon,' he said. 'Not all of us wanted to pull you from your grave. Some said you were the sea's meat and the sea's meat you should remain.' He glanced over his shoulder at a couple of the sailors who were jesting together, their faces bright with the morning light and devoid of all malice.

'Then why am I not a corpse floating somewhere out there?' Nicholas huddled into the blankets. He still felt cold, as if the marrow of his bones had been replaced with ice.

'Because your clothes say that you might be worth keeping.' His saviour indicated the garments flapping on a rope attached to the mast. 'They say that you might be a rich man whose loved ones will pay a fine ransom to have you back.'

By which statement Nicholas immediately understood that he had been captured by pirates little different to those who had come upon him in the night and tried to take his life. He snorted with amusement at the irony of the situation. Sea-wolves had been paid to take his life, and now he was to pay similar men to restore it.

'And if my clothes lie?'

The man shrugged and smiled, exposing a huge grin marred by a missing front tooth. 'Then the fish feed well; but I don't believe that your clothes lie. It was God's will that you were saved, and His intention that we should be rewarded before we get to heaven.' There was a hint of self-mockery in the corners of the grin.

Nicholas returned it as best he could, aware that it was a poor travesty for his teeth were chattering. 'Then you had better hope that I live to write my ransom note,' he said, 'for just now I am not so sure that I will.'

'We're almost in port; you'll recover.' The man strode up the ship and returned with a small flask, 'Galwegian usquebaugh,' he said. 'To put the fire back into your belly.'

Nicholas knew all about Galwegian usquebaugh. He had fallen victim to its excoriating strength when the Empress had been commandeered by English barons for a diplomatic visit to the Scottish court. He took a tentative sip and felt the familiar burning sensation, followed by a warm numbness. 'Which port?' he asked to discover if his lips and voice still worked.

'Of St Peter on the Isles de Genesies,' said his captor. 'My name is Guichard le Pecheur and I've lived here all my life.'

The Islands in mid-Channel then, and the former haunt of Eustace the Monk. Nicholas wondered if le Pecheur had been a henchman of the latter and decided not to ask.

'And you are?' The sailor nudged Nicholas with his foot, plainly desiring a response since he had revealed his own name and place.

'Nicholas de Caen, ship's master of Boston and Southampton,' he replied.

Guichard le Pecheur stroked his beard and looked thoughtful. 'Is that so?' he said softly. 'Is that so indeed?' And, turning from Nicholas, returned to the steer oar.

Nicholas was kept under house arrest in a stone dwelling not far from the jetty where his rescuer's small nef was moored. In full daylight and seen from without, she was not a vessel of prey, but one designed to slip in clandestine silence through the water. A ship for carrying men and messages in secret, as Nicholas suspected she had been doing when they picked him up. If she had been on her outward journey instead of on her way home, he knew he would certainly have been left to drown.

Nicholas was furnished with some of Guichard's spare clothes which hung on Nicholas's wiry frame like sacks. Guichard's wife, an outspoken woman almost as large as her husband, made him eat gargantuan meals as if she were feeding him up to be the main course of a feast. She also kept the household keys attached firmly to the ring at her belt and gave him no opportunity whatsoever to escape, being aided in her vigilance by a burly serving man. It was made clear to Nicholas that one step out of line would force his hostess to chain him to a barrel of salt fish in her undercroft.

Guichard set his ransom at one hundred marks, equivalent to eight sarples of the finest wool. 'You're worth more than that, but I'm feeling generous,' he said with a sarcastic grin. He set a sheet of vellum before Nicholas together with a pot of ink and a trimmed quill. 'Can you write, or do you want a scribe?'

'I can write,' Nicholas said, managing to keep the anger from his voice. He would hate to make le Pecheur feel less than generous. He picked up the quill. 'My ship's master, Martin Wudecoc, will deal with the ransom. I will write to my wife also, and let her know I am safe. She is great with child and her time is very near.'

Guichard nodded. 'I've no quarrel with that,' he said gruffly and left the room, giving Nicholas once more into the custody of his giantess wife. Nicholas wondered how much force it would take to overpower her and decided not to try. Instead, he dipped the quill in the ink and started to write.

Soon after he had finished the letters Guichard returned from his outing. The smell of the tavern was on his breath, his colour was high, but he was far from drunk.

'I knew that I had heard your name mentioned before,' he announced triumphantly. 'There was a contract of five hundred marks for your life, but it's being claimed by a French crew. They're telling all who will stand them a drink that you drowned when your vessel caught fire in mid-crossing.'

The cold at Nicholas's core returned. 'Did they also say at whose behest?'

Guichard shook his head. 'Don't be a wood-wit. Such matters are always arranged through another party, but I tell you this' - he wagged a scarred forefinger - 'you must have a powerful enemy to warrant such a price.' Curiosity and fresh appraisal gleamed in his eyes.

Nicholas laughed bitterly. 'It's a family tradition. But if you ask me to name the man responsible for my price, then I must disappoint you, for I do not know.'

'Oh, come now, you must have an inkling.'

'Inklings are not facts.' Nicholas shrugged and eyed the two rolls of vellum before him on the trestle. 'Nor will I point a finger until I know the truth.'