you out of hand.”
Griella grinned without humour. Her teeth were strong and very white, the lips almost purple against them.
“He might find that difficult.”
“You might kill him.” Bardolin’s voice had dropped. It was almost inaudible in the clatter about them. “But even with the change upon you, you would find it hard to kill all the soldiers on this ship, and the sailors, and the passengers who would stand against you. And once your nature is revealed, Griella, you are lost, so for the Saint’s sake rein in your temper, no matter what happens.”
She kissed him on the mouth without warning, so hard that he felt the imprint of the teeth behind her lips. He felt his face flush with blood and the immediate stir of warmth in his groin. The imp moved restlessly in the breast of his robe.
“Why did you do that?” he asked her when she drew back. He was uncomfortably aware of the erection throbbing in his breeches.
“Because you wanted me to. You have wanted me to this long time, even if you did not know it.”
He could not answer her.
“It’s all right, Bardolin. I don’t mind. I love you, you see. You are like a father and a brother and a friend to me.”
She stroked the stubble of his ruddy cheek.
“You are right, though. Everyone knows you are my guardian. Were I to refuse him, I might be damning you along with myself and I would never do that.” She smiled as sunnily as a child. Only her eyes mocked the image. He could see the beast in them, forever biding its time.
Bardolin took her hand, heedless of the stares they were attracting from their neighbours at the table.
“Hold fast, Griella, no matter what happens. Hold fast to that part of yourself that is not the animal; then you can beat it down; you can defeat it.”
She blinked. “Why would I want to do that?” Then she flashed a feral grin at him and rose, her hand slipping out from under his. “I must go. Mara expects me to help her clear up. Dear Bardolin, don’t look so worried! I know what I have to do—for your sake as well as mine.”
Bardolin watched her slim, straight back as it moved down the gundeck and was finally lost in the crowd. His face was profoundly troubled, and the imp was trembling like a leaf against the slick sweat on his chest.
“M ORE brandy for the good cleric there, girl. Don’t be shy with the stuff!”
Murad was smiling, his scar a wriggling pink furrow down one side of his face. When the girl Mara bent to pour the brandy he slid a hand under her robe, up the satin-smooth back of her leg. She twitched like a horse with a fly settling on it, but did not move away. He tweaked the soft flesh where the buttock swelled out at the top of her thigh. Then she straightened as if nothing were amiss and moved away. Di Souza was red in the face with glee, but Sequero looked merely disdainful. Murad smiled at him and raised his glass so the aristocratic young man had to follow suit.
The four of them were seated around a table which ran fore and aft along the line of the keel. At Murad’s back were the stern windows which he shared with the captain’s cabin on the other side of the thin bulkhead. The eastern sky was black, but there was a glimmer from the ship’s wake as if foamed and churned behind them. They could see the level of wine in the decanters arrayed about the table tilt slightly with the carrack’s roll, but it was so slight as to be hardly noticeable.
Sequero was still out of sorts at the death of one of his beloved broodmares. A good thing they had shipped two more than originally planned. He was not a natural shipboard companion, was Ensign Hernan Sequero. He hated the cheek-by-jowl promiscuity, the awkward hammocks, the continual stench, and especially the stubborn independence of the mariners, who looked to their own officers alone and obeyed the order of no soldier. It was an inversion of the natural order of things. His plight had provided Murad with endless private amusement in the week they had been at sea.
Di Souza, on the other hand, seemed to relish the entire experience. His prowess with an arquebus had won him the respect of soldiers and sailors alike, and his low birth seemed to have inured him to the indignities of life aboard ship. He could laugh when shitting from the ship’s head, whilst Murad suspected that Sequero performed his own functions in the depths of the hold rather than let his men see their officer hanging barearsed over the sea. Murad himself had a pot, emptied daily by one of his two cabin servants.
He studied the amber depths of his brandy in the light of the table lanterns. Fimbrian, casked in the time of his great-grandfather. And here he was wasting it on a low-born buffoon, a cleric and a tight-arsed minor noble. Well, it oiled the tongues. It let the evening slip along pleasantly enough. But it did not help loosen the lips of the damned Raven, Ortelius.
The girl, Mara, retrieved the dinner dishes and the silver cutlery that glittered the length of the table. They had dined on potted meat, freshly killed chicken, fish caught that morning and fruit from the orchards of Galiapeno. Now they sipped their brandy, cracked walnuts and popped black olives into their mouths. There was little conversation. The two junior officers did not like to speak without being spoken to first whilst at their superior officer’s table, and the Inceptine seemed to value silence as much as his own discretion.
Murad would have to invite Hawkwood to dinner one night along with the Raven, and then watch the sparks fly. By the looks of things there would be little else in the way of amusement this voyage, and he would have to be inventive if he were not to expire of boredom before they made landfall in the west.
He caught the girl looking at him and stared back blandly until her eyes darted away. She had a pleasant peasant-brown face surrounded by a mass of dark curls, and her body was stocky and strong but not overly exciting. She had shared his hanging cot ever since leaving Abrusio, but she was not the one he was truly hungering for. That short-haired, snapping-eyed wench named Griella; she was the one he wanted. It would be diverting to break her in, and he was curious to see what kind of shape hid under those boyish clothes she wore. She hated him too, which was even better. Where was she tonight? Her absence irritated him, which was one of the reasons for the fear in the other girl’s eyes.
“A capital brandy,” Ortelius said in the silence. “You keep a good cellar even while afloat, Lord Murad.”
Murad inclined his head. “There are certain luxuries which are not in fact luxuries, but more . . . accessories of rank. We may not need them, but they serve to remind us of who we are.”
Ortelius nodded gravely. “Just so long as we do not find we cannot do without them.”
“You have precious few luxuries with you on this voyage, I fear,” Murad said sympathetically, though inwardly he was seething at the cleric’s implication.
“Yes. I came aboard in some haste, I am afraid. But it is no matter. I may not have the austere habits of a Friar Mendicant, but it will do me no harm to forgo some of the prerequisites of my rank for a time. Such things bring us closer to God.” He tossed back the last of his brandy.
“Of course, admirable,” Murad said absently. He was searching for an opening, a chink in the Inceptine’s bland manner. He saw Sequero and di Souza exchange glances; they knew the nightly game had started again.
“Well, we are in your spiritual charge, Father Ortelius. I am sure I speak for all the soldiers and mariners and common folk aboard when I say we shall rest easier knowing that you are here to shrive us of our sins and to watch over our moral welfare. But tell me: what do you think of the worthy crews who maintain these ships, or indeed of the passengers with whom you have taken ship?”
Ortelius looked at him, his normally urbane countenance twisting with what seemed like a spot of wariness.
“I’m not sure I follow you, my son.”
“Oh come now, Father! Surely you must have noticed that half of Hawkwood’s crew have faces as black as apes. They are heathens—Merduks!”
“Are you sure, my son?” Ortelius had stopped playing with his empty glass and was watching Murad closely, like a fencer waiting for the change of balance that heralded a thrust.
“Why, yes! Some of them are black worshippers of the evil prophet Ahrimuz.”
“Then I must do my humble best to show them the true and righteous path to the Company of the Saints,” Ortelius said sweetly.
But Murad went on as if the priest had not spoken.
