Pawn in Frankincense (10 page)

‘They’ve run out the cannon,’ said Marthe. ‘He is turning to fight.’

Then, above the shouting on deck, they heard Lymond’s voice take over.

The commands were in the peculiar Levantine French used in the Mediterranean fleet. Philippa could make nothing of them, but Marthe, listening, said in the same cool, academic voice she had used all along, ‘Are you interested in technique? This is a classic defence being carried out, with one or two variations. If we lift the hatch-cover a little, I shall show you.’

It was against orders, but it was better than staying in gloom and ignorance below. Leaving Fogge sitting with her eyes shut on the mattress, Marthe climbed the ladder and in a moment had the cover expertly open no more than six inches, for Philippa to see. There was a moment’s silence. Then over her shoulder, she heard the other girl laugh, under her breath. ‘Now indeed, now indeed we shall
see,’ said Marthe. ‘Whether our friend shines
velut inter Stellas luna minores
, or not.’

‘You don’t like him,’ said Philippa. It was a crazy conversation. The sky was dark orange to begin with: how could it be, in the middle of the day? Between the two masts hung the sun, like a strange, pale blue sequin: the sails were down, and the odd light ran like amber over jacks of mail and shields and vizorless helms, over wrought cannon and ranked arquebuses on their crutches; on pikes and swords and halberds, and sank dying into the wadded textures of piled fenders and cables and heaped mattresses and awnings which had been structured with lashed oars and canvas into protection for the oarsmen and entrenchments within the galley itself.

On the long passages, in the prow and the poop, and in front of her, by the sloop and the iron-bound box of the ovens, the ship’s seamen and officers and her own company were spaced: the Master, in a well-greased jack of mail, was standing just in front of her, Jerott beside him, watching the bos’n amidships, the silver pipe round his neck, accepting and transmitting a series of orders from Lymond, unseen on the tabernacle. As the mosaic above her shifted and changed and changed swiftly again, Philippa saw Onophrion, vast in a leather jack, standing in the
fougon
, a two-handed sword reversed in his fists, and Gaultier, a borrowed helmet framing his narrow, seamed face, kneeling beside another of the six hatches. The slave gang, no longer rowing
à outrance
, but holding the
Dauphiné
steadily, head into the wind, were unarmed. But each oarsman, Philippa observed, quite outside the usual custom, had been released from his fetters.

She saw all that, and then the deck above her cleared momentarily of men and she was able at last to catch a glimpse of the sea. Under the queer lurid sky, the water moved, heaving unbroken in a dark and metal-bloomed blue. And shearing through it towards them, sails full, oars flashing, were two attackers, not one: on the port side, a galley like their own, but with twice their cannon and three times their number of armed seamen. And from the starboard side a capital ship, Spanish-built, and armed on all sides with what looked like its full complement of four hundred soldiers. Watching them streaking towards her, Philippa glimpsed the slaves at the oar benches, their ranked faces dark olive and black. Unlike theirs, these galleys were being propelled by Moors, or Arabs or Turks. Small wonder Lymond had realized so quickly that the
Dauphiné’s
top speed was not nearly enough. There had been no choice but to surrender or fight. But how on earth could he fight?

‘… No,’ said Marthe, in her ear, startlingly continuing a forgotten conversation. ‘I have no great love for him. It is a consolation. Think, if he were able to deliver us from this engagement, how very trying that unassailable self-esteem would become.’

Philippa gripped the ladder, hard, with her shaky hands. ‘I think I could struggle along with it,’ she said. ‘Are they Spanish, or corsairs? I want to be able to say “no” in the right language.’ Rowing against the freakish, southerly wind, the galley was almost stationary, rising and falling on the greasy dark swell, while from ahead, on either side, the two attacking ships streamed converging towards them. The big capital ship, black-painted, flew no national flag.

Marthe was listening. ‘That’s the challenge,’ she said. ‘In French; but then they could see we are a French ship. I can’t tell who they are.’ A line of thought showed, fleetingly, between the fair brows: otherwise she looked quite undisturbed. Philippa, envying either her acting or her stolidity, asked what they had said.

‘The usual. Heave to, or we’ll ram you to the bottom,’ said Marthe. ‘A matter of form, if you like. We’re hove to already.’

It seemed to Philippa that one might as well die naïve as die ignorant, so she kept on inquiring. ‘Why? Why did we turn round to face them, and stop? And
what’s wrong with the sky?
’

‘We turned round because we can’t outrun them, and all our cannon is at and around the bows: look at it. And we’re waiting because the bombardiers won’t have time to load twice before the ships close; so we hold fire till well within range. When you see the volume of smoke from the first shot, you’ll realize anyway that there are no second chances. It may not come to that, of course. He may parley, or offer them some of our cargo, for instance. It depends what they want.’

‘And the sky?’

‘Oh, that’s our other stroke of bad luck,’ said Marthe. ‘It’s just a sandstorm over North Africa, but the sirocco’s blowing it over our way. Turks and Moors, of course, know it’s a sandstorm. French convicts are much more liable to think the Wrath of God is upon them, however M. Crawford may explain briskly otherwise. A change of wind would be nice.’

‘But you don’t expect one?’

‘I never expect anything,’ said Marthe. ‘It provides a level, low-pitched existence with no disappointments.’

‘I’m all for a level, low-pitched existence,’ said Philippa. ‘And when you see your way back to one, for heaven’s sake don’t forget to tell me.’ At which Marthe, surprisingly, laughed aloud.

Then, suddenly, they saw the faces at the bows turn, bluish-pale in the orange-brown dusk, and Lymond’s voice, secure and carrying, began to initiate the first stages of action. For a long moment, Marthe watched, then she laid a hand on Philippa’s arm. ‘They’re pirate ships, demanding complete surrender of cargo and crew. He’s going to fight,’ she said. ‘Come down. We must close the hatch now.’ And in silence, Philippa followed her into the dark of the cabin.

On deck, nothing moved but for the idling oars, rowing by thirds
to keep the boat still. Timbers creaked. The sea slapped and hissed up and down the low freeboard, and on deck sprays of fire bloomed from gunplace to gunplace, sizzling in the burnt-orange haze. The sun had gone, and although it was afternoon still, falling chiffons of light brown and russet concealed the light from the sky and enclosed the three ships and the glittering, indigo water in a strange saffron dusk. Within it, the shining wood of the masts, the white sails of the enemy, the blanched ranks of slaves and fighting men gleamed not ruddy but a cold aquamarine; a ghostly blue-white that peopled the three ships, as they converged silently, faster, with a crew of dead men. A growling: a low-throated mutter of fear started and could be heard, travelling from bench to bench. Jerott looked round, sharply, at the tabernacle where Lymond stood; and Lymond, at the same moment, gave the word of command.

They were just within range. Under other circumstances, Jerott guessed, Lymond would have delayed a few seconds longer. But the
chiourme
needed action. The whistle shrilled, loud and clear, and was repeated twice along the slim ship. Then, instantly, the living pieces shattered and jumped; the ranks of scarlet flame jerked forward as one; the teams for each machine and each gun flashed in their drill like warp and weft of some pattern of steel. There was, simultaneously, the multiple crash of the cannon, and the coughing rattle of arquebus fire. Lead balls, bullets, stones and blasts of cutting projectiles streamed over the water from the
Dauphiné
and exploded into the ships approaching her flanks. Philippa, had she still been watching from her raised hatch-lid, would have seen something else. Hurtling through the air towards the smaller enemy galley was a strange missile: a pair of flying black balls, joined by a looping streamer of chain.

It was this that Jerott watched, and the Master, and Lymond, he knew, from his higher viewpoint behind. The captain of the red galley saw it too, but could do nothing about it. With a whine the projectile arrived, bursting through the taut folds of the sail, and with a triple crack like a whip embraced the sixty-foot mainmast, snapped it, and plunging down with mast, sail and yardarm to the deck brought the mizzenmast crashing down likewise.

Through the choking grey smoke which enveloped him, Jerott saw chaos break out on the red galley. The guns, primed to fire, remained silent; the oars driving her on to ram the
Dauphiné’s
side remained stuck like toothpicks, askew from her flanks as the slaves struggled beneath the weight of fallen canvas and timber. Jerott looked quickly to starboard.

Nothing that their guns had been able to do had checked the capital galley. With her sides bruised and her bulwarks here and there splintered she came on instead twice as fast, the bos’n’s pipe shrilling, and the shouting of enraged men came from her decks.
They looked into the black throats of her cannon and saw the luminous blue of her sails tower against the dark tawny sky, and Lymond, his voice cutting through the uproar of men and ships and the compressed and walloping seas, called, ‘
La scie!
’

Jerott saw the beak of the capital galley, rushing towards them, suddenly hesitate; saw the bombardiers pause, their orders unfinished, the touch-flame unused in their hands. Flattening back under a stutter of arquebus fire, he took time at last to look to port.

The dismasted galley, out of hand, was driving unchecked towards them, pushed by the wind and the running speed she already had gained. Not only was she directly in her own
capitane’s
line of fire, but in a moment she would collide at full tilt with the
Daupine’s
port flank, while the capital galley performed a more orthodox ramming attack on the right. By the attack on the right, the
Dauphiné
would be held for grappling and boarding. But the beak coming at them from the left, Jerott knew, would stave them right through.

If Lymond had not already given that order. The words ‘
La scie!
’ and the bos’n’s pipe rang through the galley. There was a jolt which nearly flung Jerott, prepared and braced as he was, off his feet; and then the
Dauphiné
began, in great leaping thrusts, to drive by the poop, backwards. Trained to a hairsbreadth, the three master slaves on every bench changed hands and feet, and faces turned to prow, sent the solid fifty-foot oars pitching reversed through the water; and their wake hissed unreeling before them.

In vain, the seamen in the black galley fled to the sheets. In vain the slaves, obeying the whistle, stopped rowing and began to backwater. The corsair capital galley, proceeding briskly against the flank of the
Dauphiné
, faced the red corsair galley, proceeding unmanned on the identical, opposite course, and as the
Dauphiné
absented herself swiftly backwards, collided the one with the other with a satisfying and ungodly bang.

‘Jesu!’ said Marthe, who five minutes previously, uncontrollably, had again lifted the hatch. On deck, the steady stream of orders continuing, the sail was being broken out, swiftly, and while the bow-oars knelt on the gangway, bearing the loom of the oar, the blade free of the water, the first and fifth men in each bench were running the benches to their back-rowing stations. The third man fixed the footrest. The fourth man fixed the
contre-pédague
. Then the oars dipped, the foam turquoise in the gloom. In permanent back-rowing stations, the
Dauphiné
shot north towards the Isles Baléares and safety, while the two corsair ships swung locked and screaming behind.

Half an hour later, sand had begun to fall on the ship and visibility dropped to a mile. Half an hour after that, it was perfectly dark and a thick and ochreous mud, borne on a light, tepid rain, fell on crew and galley alike. Reversing her stroke and her benches and travelling
on compass bearings and in life-preserving discomfort, the
Dauphiné
turned and made her way, direct under oars, to the North African port of Algiers.

At supper-time Marthe and Philippa were allowed to emerge, picking their way over a mysterious silt, to come and dine with the captain. Lymond, arriving undisturbed from a talk with Onophrion, was sociable in a perfunctory way. ‘How was it below? Rather tedious, I’m afraid.’

‘Not at all,’ said Philippa. ‘We were laying wagers over whether we’d rather be raped, or resigned to a smug little victory.’

The lazy blue eyes opened, gratifyingly, in extravagant calculation. ‘Why not have both? We can arrange it.’

Marthe said dryly, ‘Philippa wishes only to say thank you, and so also do I. They say in Italy, don’t they, that the boat will sink that carries neither monk, nor student, nor whore.… How good that we have Mr Blyth.

‘How good that we have Mlle Marthe,’ Lymond replied. His clothes, freshly changed, were impeccable and his brushed yellow hair, free of sand, was lit guinea-gold by the gleam of the lamps. ‘Of her fellow men so charming a student.’

And before the spark of blue eyes meeting blue, Philippa’s undistinguished gaze dropped.

The woman, of course, is in Algiers
, the Dame de Doubtance had said. And what had the nun said, in the steaming water of Baden?
I was a slave in Dragut the corsair’s own palace … I was at the branding of all his poor children … She might have been queen of Ireland, she told me: that black-haired Irishwoman with the golden child on her knee
.

 … Piffle, Jerott Blyth was thinking to himself as, dressed overall, they lay overnight in the outer harbour at Algiers, awaiting permission to enter. Drooling, dangerous piffle. A trap framed by Gabriel on the premise that no man in Lymond’s position could afford to neglect the obvious gesture. A trap which, whether from amour-propre, nostalgia or a sense of personal responsibility, Lymond was intending to spring.