Swords From the Sea (41 page)

Pierre's wide-set brown eyes glowed with pleasant expectation. It was a feast day; perhaps there would be a procession of the saints' images; certainly there would be girls to talk to and warm wine to quaff. He meant to see everything in this big village on the northern sea.

He reached the jetties of the dockyards and cast a glance to windward. Bare hulks of ships, housed in and blanketed with snow; the gray ribbon of the river, stretching away to the forest on the horizon; a gray sky, shot with a single yellow gleam over the swaying pine tops; smoke curling up from log huts on the flat shore; dogs roaming among the deserted wharfs, but not a man to be seen.

Marking the position of the bark, he went on, with a shrug at the forbidding scene.

"Faith, 'tis a land God looks on only at night."

As soon as he turned a corner, a boy appeared around the bow of the bark and hurried after him, yet without making any attempt to catch up. It was easy to keep Big Pierre in sight because he walked down the middle of the snow-covered streets; and it was a simple matter to follow him without being seen, because he never looked back.

Swinging along at a round pace he waved his cap at the horses, three abreast, that raced up to him, drawing sleighs, and forced them to turn out. When the drivers cursed he grinned back cheerfully and shouted out his marching song:

When Big Pierre sang from an open throat, there were many who turned to listen and some who waved back. He had a weather eye out for a tavern all the while, and stared admiringly at the great doors of the churches, painted with amazingly colorful demons and angels-a sight that brought the cap from his head with a fine flourish. Then, at a side street he paused abruptly and ended his song on an unfinished note.

A gun limber was being driven along slowly, three men tied by the wrists to the cart-tail. They were naked, their skin blue with the bite of the wind. Behind them walked three grenadiers, swinging knouts-short staffs to which were attached leather thongs tipped with iron.

At a word of command from a sergeant who brought up the rear, one of the soldiers jerked down his lash with a hiss on a naked back. Blood spattered down into the snow, leaving a trail of red drops between the wheel marks of the limber.

Pierre's shoulders twitched in an involuntary shiver. The muscles in his cheeks grew rigid, and his voice was hoarse when he spoke to the sergeant of grenadiers.

"Ho, la! Where is the tavern of this village?"

He spoke in French and the other understood. The sergeant had long curls whitened with flour, and walked with his toes turned out, his thin back straight as the rattan cane he carried. Pierre, who had seen a bit of the world, knew the earmarks of a soldier who had served under Frederick the Great of Prussia.

"Follow your nose, take the first turning to your left, and look for the sign of the Fleur-de-Luys." The sergeant's blurred eyes ran up Pierre's powerful body and fastened on his set face. "So-a little blood makes your gorge rise, my lad?"

"What are these birds?"

"Deserters, that were caught. Thirty-one-" the Prussian resumed his count of the lashes under his breath-"thirty-four for that cock. Trying to get off in time of war, they were! You are going to the tavern, eh?"

"Aye," grunted Pierre and rolled away.

The sergeant halted to stare after him thoughtfully, until the boy who had followed Pierre from the ship came up and pulled at his sleeve.

"If it please you, sir," the apprentice whispered, "the tall rogue is one of the crew. Master Ruggewein bade me say the others be at the merchants' shops by the bridge.

"They will be drunk by candlelight."

The sergeant nodded, pursing his lips.

"Master Ruggewein did say," piped up the boy, "that this big lout is a bad one with his hands. You had best take a squad of muskets with you, if you would fetch him in."

The sergeant's face wrinkled in a noiseless laugh. He had seen the Provence sailor shiver when the knout fell and he felt sure that the man was squeamish at a little blood-letting. The Prussian was a drillmaster in the grenadier corps, and he had seldom encountered a chap he could not handle with cane and tongue.

The candles that gleamed inside the horn windows-the only sign of festival in the Fleur-de-Luys-leaped as Big Pierre came through the door with a flurry of wind-driven snow. A breath of frosty air cut into the aura of drying sheepskins and stale cabbage soup and dirty humans about the red-hot stove.

Pierre looked around and, failing to find any of the men from the bark, made for the counter where a pyramidal candle of some kind of animal fat bubbled and smoked, disclosing the butts of wine casks in the gloom behind.

"Brandy, if you please, Mignon," he smiled at the proprietress, a buxom woman who hailed from Brittany and better things. "One can't get such a thing as brandied grapes in this dogs' village, I suppose. No? Well, fry up a cod in oil and leave the bottle-isn't this a feast day? Where are the girls? Why doesn't anyone strike up a song?"

He glanced hopefully at the long benches where fat-backed Russians sat sleepily over vodka, or kvass-a fermented milk drink that the Provencal who liked good wine had christened "pig's lemonade" after a sip-and at the walls, where straw had been shaken down.

On this straw, stirred by the wind that swept through the cracks, he could make out pairs of feet in the shadows-the boots of a dragoon sleeping off the effects of the Fleur-de-Luys vintages, the rag wrappings of beggars, the bare feet of pilgrims, swollen and calloused. And one pair of broken horsehide shoes out of which thrust toes belonging to a peasant girl, whose yellow hair spread all over the straw.

The very - of a lot, Pierre thought, and turned his attention to the opposite wall. Apart from the others, several men sat here on a carpet that had once been respectable. They had keen eyes and long, thin beards and hooked noses-Mohammedans by their turbans and voluminous khalats-traders by the packs stowed jealously behind them.

"Eh, what are these folk?" he asked the Brittany woman.

"Bashkirs, or some other tribesmen. They come from the south with rhubarb and saffron. But they will not go south again, monsieur."

"Why not, Mignon?"

"The soldiers say there is war with the Turks. I don't know; but those heathen will be clapped into jail all the same." The woman, who had once been pretty, became talkative. Pierre was good to look at, and he had given her a whole silver crown. "Folk come here from all the world-"

"Bon sang, and why?"

"It's a rich country. The nobles only carry gold-won't bother about silver or such-like. And I've heard tell the Muscovites have made themselves lords of the heathen empires down in the south. The empress has her palaces full of foreign gentry, to wait on her."

"Who is the king?"

"He died. But Catherine is more of a king than he ever was. Yes, this is a feast day." She glanced at a black and gold icon banging over the stove with lighted candles beneath it. "She is like a pope, too. The peasants say she is an angel out of heaven. But the boyars will cut up something fierce this night."

Pierre, who was hungry for excitement, wanted to join them instantly. "These boyars, where can a chap find them?"

"Tiens, my good lad-they are at the winter sports or the theater; they're the grandees, the princes, certainly." She glanced at the door anxiously. "You may see them in the street-such as ain't under the tables. Only their servants come here." The woman from Brittany ran back to the kitchen, returning in a moment with the cod Pierre had ordered, smoking in bubbling oil in a wooden dish. Wiping the perspiration from her red face, she leaned close to him to whisper-

"Go back to your ship, my man. Go, quickly!"

Pierre took the platter and looked at her inquiringly.

"This is an evil place, monsieur. Ah, pray to the good God and get away out of sight before it is too late."

Between mouthfuls of the cod, washed down with white wine, the man from Provence surveyed his surroundings. It was not like other taverns, but he had seen worse. True, the men were not sociable and no one laughed; still, he would hit on one of his mates from the bark presently and go the rounds of other taverns. The evening had barely begun.

"Corbleu-what is wrong here?" he asked.

"This land is not as others. There is a curse upon it. 'Tis a simple matter to get into it, but one does not get out again in a hurry."

Pierre thought of the bark, and the snow barrier that was rising around the town. Yes, he could believe that. He was in for a bad winter, but he never bothered his head about the future. In his thirty years of life he had been in many tight places, and enjoyed fighting his way out. He poured a glass of wine for the woman and waited for the loosening of her tongue.

"She is the curse of this land-that witch of an empress, monsieur. She is worse than the blind witch of Tanteval, who lives in caves and sings when the surf roars and a ship is wrecked. She is an old woman, but her face is young. It is quite true that she killed that poor man, her husband. And all her lovers she raises to great power, then casts them aside."

"I would like to clap eye on her," observed the sailor, his mouth full of cod.

"I have seen her, of nights!" The woman crossed herself and breathed quickly. "Ah, if it is known that I talked of these things they would burn me. Catherine rides in a gold coach without wheels, drawn by roaring beasts. And her skin shines more than the gold-perhaps witches' oil is rubbed on it, and she rides to the Devil's Sabbath. A giant with one eye always sits beside her-a prince of Muscovy."

Pierre waxed cheerful. All this would be well worth seeing. He knew the superstitions of the coast of Brittany.

"Faith," he laughed, "you will be saying that this lord is twin to the King of the Auxcriniers, who looks up from the waves. Him with the livid skin, when the lightning flashes, and the beard of shells. Whoever sees him is sure to be shipwrecked, I've heard."

The woman hesitated, and clasped her hands in her apron.

"Just the same, monsieur, I say to you that she is seeking for souls."

"The deuce!"

"Souls, or serfs-'tis all the same. She lures men to serve her, and then there is no escaping. They will carry off a fine, upstanding lad like you for the army-" The door was flung open, and the candles flared. An old man, his head covered with what looked like a woolen nightcap, and a pack strapped to his back, entered hurriedly. He panted as he leaned on the arm of a young girl.

Pierre forgot witches and the catching of souls in an instant. He twirled his mustache with both hands, bowed with an air, sweeping his cap over the earth that was the floor of the tavern.

He knew the man for a Jew, but the young woman was more than pretty. Even while she shook the melting snow from her dark tangle of hair and her foxskin shuba, she glanced around the room, her brown eyes resting longest on Pierre and the group of the Mohammedan traders.

Here was no blowsy Dutch vrauw, but a young thing of fire and laughter. Pierre, whose wits were not laggard, noticed that the old man was frightened and the girl amused.

"Good day, little sparrow," he cried. "Eh, it is good to come in out of the storm, is it not? Only say-shall I clear a place for you at the stove, or will you share a glass from this fine bottle?"

It seemed to him that she understood and would have answered, but changed her mind so quickly that he was not sure.

He had seen her type before: the poise of the head, the olive skin, the full eyes and the delicate lips. This was no daughter of gnomes, or child of a Muscovite ox. A Gypsy? Perhaps.

He stood in front of her, holding out a freshly filled glass, smiling. His eyes, clear as a boy's and as fearless, smiled as well as his lips. The high spirits and the vitality of this girl in the foxskin shuba appealed to the sailor's mood.

Although she shook her head, her lips curved and white teeth gleamed vagrantly. Pierre saw that just under her eyes the skin was lighter than above, as if her face had been veiled from the glare of a burning sun. A ring, nearly as long as her middle finger, aroused his interest at once.

It was heavy silver, set with sapphires and small emeralds that made a pattern. Apparently meaningless, this pattern was formed of an Arabic word, possibly one of the numberless talismans of the Moslems, possibly a signet. Pierre looked at the merchant on the rug.

One had risen and was fingering his scimitar hilt irresolutely. Pierrethough he watched for it-did not see the girl make a sign, but presently the Bashkir squatted among his companions again, turning his back as if indifferent to the newcomers.

But Pierre felt sure that the merchant knew this girl, and that she was an Arab; more likely, a Berber. He wondered what a woman of the southern tribes was doing in this place. Before now he had seen such, standing in the slave markets of Algiers.

The Jew kept plucking at her sleeve, scrabbling his beard with a shaking hand. She paid absolutely no attention until she had finished her scrutiny of the room. Then, she spoke to him and he went off like a welltrained dog, to sit in the darkest corner, and the girl walked around the circle of tribesmen.