Addaf looked pointedly at Y Crach until the man took the hint and went away. Then he levered himself up.
Hwyel rose up with Addaf, taking in the silver and iron look of the man, the hump of muscle on one shoulder that made him look like a crookback. Hwyel had been with Addaf for seven years of hard life and killing and knew it had infected his leader with a disease which had driven out joy.
He wondered what Addaf had once been like, in the part long burned away by war. For a moment, he remembered his own younger self and grinned as Addaf turned to him.
‘We will make them dance, we will make them kick,’ he said, ‘with a clothyard shaft and a crooked stick.’
The echo of the boy he had been fell like dull pewter between them; Addaf’s gaze was sour.
‘Teg edrych tuag adref,’ he answered – it is good to think of home. Which was a lie for him, who had not thought of his little patch, two brothers and mam in many a long year.
Mam will be dead and gone, he thought with a sudden, vicious wrench of all that he had abandoned. Brothers, too, likely … and if they live yet it will no longer be my patch, but will belong to them now and the babanod they have made who grew up into it after them. No one there would know me if I walked into the centre of the place.
He shook it all off like a dog from water and went rolling away on bad knees.
Hwyel watched Addaf’s lumpen back as he hirpled away towards the others, barking orders; he wondered how long it would take and what he must endure to become as black-avowed as him.
An hour later, he found out.
Irish Sea
At the same moment …
Niall Silkie skinned down from the mast-nest on a tarred rope, swinging on to the sterncastle like some long-armed babery. He landed lightly, almost on the toes of the scowling Pegy Balgownie.
‘It is my sure opeenion’, he said, ‘that yon weirman weltering astern is afire.’
Pegy blinked and Hal saw the bewilderment in Rossal’s eyes.
‘He says the warship astern of us is burning.’
‘There’s after being a wheen o’ smoke,’ Niall Silkie persisted and Pegy stroked his beard, scowling at Rossal.
‘Perhaps it really is the other ship, this Maryculter,’ de Grafton offered in French, his spade-bearded face heavy with concern. ‘In which case, we must help, surely, if only to discover why it is afire and who attacked it.’
‘A ruse,’ Kirkpatrick countered, tension thickening his Braid Scots. ‘Designed to play on the chivalry of your graces … aw, it is creishie wi’ cunning, for they must ken that we have proper Knights of the Order here, who once wore the white mantle rather than the grey of lesser lights. They will rely on your nobility and honour blinding you, sirs, whether you are disbanded or no’.’
Rossal’s brow lashed itself with frowns and Pegy, sensing the balance, glanced at the filling sail, then at the fog bank.
‘The wind is up a notch. Two nicks on the steerin’ oar to farans and we can be in the haar and vanished like wraiths, my lord.’
Somhairl, looking up through the castle planks at the booted feet and able to hear every word, leaned expectantly on the starboard-quarter tiller, bunching his muscles to turn the ship at Pegy’s order. Men waited with coiled rope to lend their muscle to haul the unwieldy vessel quickly on to a new course; the moment clung and sucked the breath away.
Then Rossal shifted.
‘Bring in your sail, captain,’ he said firmly. ‘We will await the arrival of this burning vessel.’
Kirkpatrick made a disgusted growl in the back of his throat and Pegy, after a short pause, nodded and bawled out the orders; men sprang to obey and the Bon Accord balked and then started to roll and pitch. Sim gagged and stumbled to the thwarts.
‘Leave a gap in the mantlets,’ de Villers called out, almost joyously, ‘so our comrade can lose his belly over the side in peace.’
Below, Widikind heard the laughter and began to take his leave of Do?a Beatriz, offering her a stiff little bow from the neck.
‘Are you afraid?’
He heard her voice, light and musical, the French tinged with a delicious accent; his eyebrows went up at the question.
‘If there is to be a fight, the Lord will hold His Hand over me – or He will lift me up and I will be gathered into His Grace. What is to fear?’
Her laugh was a trill and she unloosed the net of pearls, signalling Piculph to help; Widikind found the sight of the Moor-dark man running his fingers through her hair to tease the net free disturbing and uncomfortable.
‘I meant of me,’ she replied and he blinked, then recovered himself.
‘We believe it is a dangerous thing for any religious to look too much upon the face of a woman.’ He recited from memory the old catechism. ‘The Knighthood of Jesus Christ should avoid, at all costs, the company of women, by which men have perished many times.’