“You can resupply at Marbella, let’s say,” he said. “That’s as good a place as any for me to go ashore. From there, you pass through the Strait, assuming you’re not taken by pirates or the inquisitors don’t catch you first, and once you’ve cleared the Strait, on to the Dark Sea. Yes, Marbella will do nicely. There’s a Franciscan priory nearby—I stayed there for a night on the way down. They’ll take care of me. I’ll tell them I was kidnapped, and I’ve got a swollen face to show for it.” He thumped up the steps to the stern castle, folding the sleeves of his habit past his rough elbows. “Sleep a while, madam, while I get us under way. When you wake up, I’ll show you how to manage this boat.”
Fatima studied his face. There were weary creases around his mouth, and resignation in the bright, flat blue of his eyes. There was no love there, but no malice either.
“You’re the one with the knife,” he said drily. “I’m not even allowed to carry one, and I’m not likely to bludgeon you to death in your sleep with my sandal.”
She had to smile at this.
“Very well,” she said, and turned away toward the hold.
Chapter 14
Fatima slept without dreaming. The hold of the cog was outfitted with four narrow bunks set into the hull; a wooden screen separated this makeshift cabin from the aft portion of the hold, where the barrels of water and wine and one precious crate of hard cheese were lashed together. Gwennec half carried Hassan down the stairs and secured him in one of the bunks, rolling blankets and burlap behind him to keep his head elevated. Fatima collapsed into the opposite bunk without speaking and turned her face to the hull, listening, for no more than a few moments, or so it seemed, to the groans and sighs of wood and water before sleep took her.
When she woke again, there was sunlight streaming down the open staircase from the deck above, leaving a square of yellow on the sloping floor of the hold. A familiar shadow fell across it, its sloped shoulders rocking up and down with its strange gait. Vikram paced back and forth, his dark head awash in light.
“You’re alive,” she called to him, laughing, reaching out her hands. He turned and curled his lip at her.
“If you can call it that,” he snapped. “I had a vision of my own death at that stinking, mud-caked wharf. It’s all I can think about now. Mortality! If you’d listened to me and run when I told you, I might have been spared such awful knowledge, along with enough spear wounds to impress a messiah.”
Fatima tried to make sense of this accusation. “How?” she asked after a pause. “How will you die?”
“In bed with a full-figured, golden-haired woman who will weep and rend her garments at my passing.” Vikram sat down and began to chew on his talons, looking melancholy. “An enviable death. No less than I deserve.”
“When?” pressed Fatima.
“Many hundreds of years from now, as far as I can tell, though visions aren’t always precise about these things.”
Fatima felt her shoulders drop. “That’s a very, very long time away,” she said, relieved.
“For you, perhaps. But I’ve lived five or six times that long already. It doesn’t seem very far away to me.” Vikram looked into the sunlight cascading down the staircase. “Listen: remember this part. I’m sending someone to you, someone I trust. I say I trust her, but you must not. Do you understand? She will help, but only so long as it pleases her to do so. You mustn’t make her angry. And try not to fall in love with her. That’s a doom I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you thick? I’ve just explained it all. You should get up. That monk is too polite to come and wake you, and it’s after midday.”
“I’m already up,” said Fatima.
“You’re so funny,” said Vikram.
Fatima opened her eyes. The hold murmured around her as the boat shifted from side to side, as if it, too, had been resting, and was stretching and rousing itself now in the bright sun. Across the narrow width of the hold, Hassan was still asleep, his breathing regular, his lips parted slightly. His color looked better. For a moment, Fatima was happy. The way they had left each other intruded on her thoughts slowly, like a child dragging its feet. Averting her eyes, Fatima kicked off the rough blanket under which she had slept and stumbled across the gently swaying floor to the stairs.
A rush of cold, wet air pummeled her as she emerged onto the deck. Above her head, Gwennec clung to the mast like a great black crow, his cloak and habit flapping about him. It was an unsuitable garment for ship work. Every few moments, he was forced to interrupt the complicated operation he was performing on the rigging to curse and push his skirt down over his legs, which, in contrast to his reddened face and hands, were blue-white, as if he had been stitched together from two entirely different skins. Fatima couldn’t help herself: she laughed, leaning against the last stair for support. Gwennec twisted up his face at her, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the cloudless glare.
“Laugh now, madam,” he said, “but you’ll miss me when you’ve got to do all this by yourself.”
Fatima let her gaze wander across the ship to the series of ropes that connected parts of the deck she couldn’t identify to pieces of the sail and rigging that were likewise inscrutable. She adopted an aloof expression, determined not to let Gwennec see her uncertainty. He clambered down the mast and presented himself with a lopsided smile, shaking out his scapular.
“Let’s start with pointing the boat the right way,” he said. “There’s a treasure on board you didn’t know about. I’ve set it all up. Look.” He led her up the steps to the stern castle. Fatima could see nothing but sail and water, a field of royal blue unfurling in every direction. A thin ribbon of land lay off their right flank, the sky above it discolored with smoke: this was the only sign of human life.
“A sane man would stick closer to shore than this,” said Gwennec. “But you don’t want to be spotted, so.” He gestured toward the tiller. Beside it stood a little table, upon which lay Hassan’s map, weighted by stones on three corners and by a small oil lamp on the fourth. Next to that sat an instrument Fatima had never seen before: a hemisphere of brass suspended between two slender halos of similar metal. The face of the hemisphere was a wind rose with arrows to mark each of the cardinal directions; smaller lines marked the degrees in between. The compass lay still between its twin satellites, which orbited around it slowly, keeping it flat as the ship rocked back and forth.
“What is it?” asked Fatima. She didn’t dare touch the thing, which seemed to move through some delicate, internal volition, like a living being.
“It’s a dry compass,” said Brother Gwennec with a hint of pride in his voice. “Suspended in a pair of gimbals to keep the needle from grounding. It was a gift from the Portuguese to Queen Isabella, who lent it to the lady Luz for her journey. It’s worth more than this boat and all our lives put together. She’ll be wanting it back, I’ve no doubt.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Fatima. More beautiful, perhaps, because it had been Luz’s and now belonged to her.
“Aye,” said Gwennec, who looked at her approvingly. “It’s very beautiful. Better than the old water compasses—a child could make a water compass, but one big wave and the needle goes sloshing out on your shoes. And the dry ones as they use on land ground like hell aboard a ship for the same reason. Too much back-and-forth. This—” He reached out and tapped the edge of one gimbal; it responded silently, sending its sibling rotating in the opposite direction. “This is as pretty to me as a painting in a church or a sleeve of the best silk brocade. If a man can dream up a compass like this, we must not have forfeited God’s grace just yet.”