Go.”
Sir Henry made his way back to where he had stowed his pack and bound himself into place beside it, securing it to himself with a short length of rope and then binding himself firmly to the ship’s rail, close to one of the holes in the vessel’s side that allowed the trapped water of inboard waves to stream back into the sea. He barely had time to finish the last knot before the storm broke over them, and from that moment on he lived in a screaming, wind-and-water-filled hell, unaware of time, or day or night or anything else that made human life sane or desirable. He was aware of changing colors in the cloud rack from time to time, and on one occasion he found himself being painfully battered by pebble-sized hailstones that piled up in sheltered places on the deck like shoals of splintered ice. Then it was rain that stung his face, whipped horizontally by the howling wind, and some time after that he became aware that the temperature had plummeted, his soaked clothing chilled to the consistency of rough board. He thought he may have passed out about that time, and had no notion of how much time might have passed, but eventually he came awake again to find himself being thrown from side to side, his head banging painfully against the side of the ship at every roll. His clothing was still icy cold, but now there was sufficient light for him to see that the folds of his surcoat were thick with fresh snow. Then came a looming lurch of fear as he sensed something swinging at him, and he lost awareness of everything again.
He awoke some time later and the storm was still howling about him, and after that he drifted in and out of consciousness, mildly aware, somewhere in his mind, that the storm seemed to be dying down. He woke up again when he felt someone grasp him by the face and pinch his cheeks together, shaking his head gently. He opened his eyes and saw one of the crew members kneeling above him, peering at him closely.
“Ah, he’s alive,” the fellow muttered. “That cut on his head, all bleached and open like that, I wasn’t sure there … Right, come on, then, old man, let’s cut those ropes and see if we can get you back up on your feet.”
IT WAS EASTER SUNDAY, late in the afternoon, and if there were any priests celebrating Mass or offering thanks for their deliverance from the storm, they were doing it privately and in silence, in whatever quarters they had been able to appropriate for themselves in the aftermath of the destruction. Sir Henry St. Clair knew he was still alive, but he knew little else of any import, and he had not yet decided whether to be grateful for his survival or to regret the lost opportunity to die in the tempest and be rid of the aches, pains, and griefs that beset him now.
He sat braced on a coil of rope, staring at the junction where the sides of the ship came together at the bows. He had at least two cracked or broken ribs, the pain of which made it impossible for him to stand and lean forward against the rails, and so he was forced to sit there, unable to see over the wooden sides in front of him. His back was propped against two other, smaller rope coils balanced on the first, and he forced himself to ignore both the pain of his ribs and the inconvenience of not being able to see anything, and to concentrate instead upon the small amount of information he had managed to glean to this point. The man who had found him half dead in the scuppers had known who he was, and had summoned another man to help carry him back to the rear of the ship, where someone else had tended to his injuries—Henry had no idea who that had been, but they had strapped up his ribs and bound a cloth tightly over the gash in his right temple before sending him back, supported between two crewmen, to sit where he had spent much of the previous few days, in the foremost point of the ship’s bows and out of the way of most of the vessel’s crew.
Twenty-one men had been lost. That much Henry knew beyond doubt, having overheard a report on casualties being delivered to someone he assumed to be Besanceau on the stern deck while his injuries were being treated. He had assumed that the missing men were his own, landsmen like him and unused to being afloat, whereas the ship’s crew might reasonably be expected to survive a storm at sea. And besides, he recalled now that the galley held a complement of fifteen crew members only. But if that were true and all the missing men were his, then that meant they had lost one-fifth of their shipboard complement without their ever having had an opportunity to strike a single blow against the enemy. That thought depressed him, and he turned himself, very slightly and with great difficulty, to look back over his shoulder to where another man leaned against the side of the prow, gazing outward.
“Hey,” Henry grunted, drawing the man’s attention. “What can you see out there?”
The fellow scanned him from head to foot, then looked back over the side. “Nothing,” he growled. “An empty ocean. Not a ship in sight anywhere, except one wreck, close enough to see, turned upside down and dragging its mast. Must have air trapped inside, keeping it afloat …” He turned back, his head bent, and looked at Henry from beneath heavy black brows. “How do you feel? Better than you look, I hope. You’re trussed like a stuffed swan. Who are you, anyway?”
Henry eased himself back around to face forward again, hoping to find some comfort. “Name’s St. Clair,” he gasped, catching his breath and almost wheezing with the effort of moving. “They tell me I’ve broken some ribs, and I … aah! … I believe them. Come up here where I can see you, will you?”
The other man crossed to where he could lean an elbow on the rail and look down at Henry, nodding in sympathy. “Broken ribs are not likable. Broke two of my own last year, in Cyprus. Slipped on a greasy plank, carrying a sack, and fell against a pole on the ground. Took me months to get better. I’m called Bluethumb. I’m one of the rowers.” He held up an almost purple thumb, and Henry could not tell if the discoloration was a birthmark or the result of an old injury, but before he could ask, Bluethumb said, “St. Clair, eh? The Master-at- Arms? That St. Clair?”
“Aye, that one. Can you help me up to where I can see, just for a moment? I can’t move on my own—too tightly trussed, as you said.”
“Let’s see, then.” The man called Bluethumb bent his knees and squatted, taking Henry beneath the shoulders, then lifted him smoothly with a strong thrust of his thighs. Henry sucked in his breath sharply, but felt surprisingly little pain, and then lost all awareness of anything else as he stared at the emptiness of the waters all around them. The only thing to be seen in any direction was the wreck Bluethumb had described.
“My thanks,” he said eventually. “You may sit me down again.”
When he was back in his makeshift seat, propped up by the ropes, he allowed himself, for a brief moment, to wonder what might have happened to his son, but there was little to be gained in doing that, and so he sucked in a deep breath, then expelled it forcibly before speaking again to Bluethumb. “What about the King, is he well?”
One eyebrow rose as though the man were surprised to hear the question asked. “Of course he’s well. Why would he not be? He could walk on water, that one. Tied himself to the stern rail and fought the tiller with the helmsman throughout the storm. No wonder his people look at him the way they do. The man’s like a god.”
“Aye,” Henry said with a nod. “He can be magnificent at times, far more so than ordinary men … So what will we do now, do you know?”
Bluethumb grinned and held the discolored digit up again. “I told you, I’m a rower. They don’t ask me for advice. They tell me where to go, and when, and how fast. And I’d better get back.”
He straightened up to leave but Henry stopped him with a wave of his hand. “If you would, should you see Sir Robert de Sable back there, please give him my respects and tell him where I am and that I should like to speak with him when he can find a moment.”
The rower cocked his head. “Me? Walk up and talk to de Sable, just like that? He’d have me thrown overboard.”
“No, he would not. Mention my name as you approach—Sir Henry St. Clair—and tell him I asked you, sent you to him. Here, let me—” He began to fumble for his scrip, but the oarsman snapped a hand at him.
“I don’t want your money, Master-at-Arms. I’ll tell him what you said, and fare ye well.” He left without another word.
Sir Henry flexed his back muscles cautiously and tried to find some comfort against the piles of hard rope. He had not yet permitted himself to think about the significance of the emptiness out there beyond the ship’s walls, but now he began attempting to visualize the cataclysmic power of the storm they had survived, and to wonder how many ships might have sunk completely, simply vanishing beneath the waves and taking their crews and passengers with them. He discovered very quickly that he had no stomach for such wonderings, and no means whereby he could control his imagination’s sickening leaps and lurches, and so he was happy when de Sable’s voice distracted him.
“Well, Master St. Clair. Are you badly injured? I saw you being attended to on the stern deck but had no time right then even to cross the deck and find out what was wrong with you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, Sir Robert. Nothing serious, I mean. A bang on the head and a few
