Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [31]
‘I don’t fancy,’ said Lymond, clearing his throat suddenly, ‘that they’ll fire at close quarters, or even at long range, for that matter. When they get broadside on, they’ll trust to their hackbuts.’
‘All right,’ said de Villegagnon abruptly. ‘We have the choice of flying and outstripping their aim, and shooting it out with hand weapons. I’d rather shoot.’
‘Well, they’re hoping that at least you don’t fly,’ said Lymond amiably. So far from accepting the weapon de Villegagnon had offered, he had remained standing, gazing over the rambade. Behind them, in the absence of reassurance, the rowers faltered, and abandoning the big beechwood sweeps, had broken into a cacophony of Arabic and dockyard French. The Master, taking responsibility on himself, exposed his head with sudden valour on the poop and yelled, ‘Do not shoot! We stop!’
‘Tell him,’ said Lymond mildly to the bo’s’n, above the subdued clatter of M. de Villegagnon handing out crossbows on the coursie, ‘that the Baron d’Aramon is still at Marseilles.’
Across the glassy water over which, now bright and plain, the pirate boat was approaching, the frantic information was relayed. It had a cool reception.
‘If that is so, throw your weapons in the water!’ came the fishing boat’s response.
‘Neat,’ commented Lymond, and looked down for agreement at the railed platform where de Villegagnon now stood. But le Chevalier, at forty-one the survivor of more sea-fights than most, had already smelt the element of farce. And pinning his dignity to his instincts he rose to his full six feet four and, throwing his weapon uncharged to the deck, said, ‘I think, sir, that you know this boat?’
Without turning, Lymond grinned. ‘I know the joiner who fashioned the cannon. Thompson!’ He cupped his hands round his mouth. ‘Holà, Tamsín! Sing the next verse in French if you dare!’
Visibly, on the approaching boat, the oars paused. Then a sharp voice, in very plain English, said, ‘Who the hell’s that?’
‘The guns—my God,’ said the Chevalier de Villegagnon suddenly. ‘The guns are painted rouleaux of wood.’
His smile deepening, Lymond hailed the pirate again. ‘Francis Crawford. Have you still got my agate seal?’
A burst of magnified laughter jolted its way across the narrowing gap. ‘I lost it at knuckle-banes in the old jail at Cork. Is yon hoited bairn’s bath-boatie yours?’ Close enough to see, the beery, black-bearded face under its cap radiated malevolent good nature over the corsair’s rail. The wood and canvas guns, a little damp at the edges, were being neatly run in.
‘It’s yourself!’ shouted the man in the cap, evidently locating Lymond at last, and downing his hailer, he placed both broad red fists with purpose on the ship’s wide deal rail. ‘Christ,’ said Lymond amused. ‘He’s going to make a most superior etching in wood.’
But Tamsín, alias Thompson, or the liveliest Scottish pirate un-hung on the roads between Argyll and Ireland, the Baltic, the Straits, or anywhere else for that matter, achieved faultlessly a leap over joppling deep-sea water that M. de Villegagnon did not care to contemplate, and landed head over heels on the Sainte-Merveille as his own ship, docile to anticipated order, retreated and kept her place a discreet distance off.
‘Francis Crawford!’ intoned Mr Thompson beatifically from the planks where he sat, and surging to his bare feet, wide-legged as a horse gypsy, embraced Lymond violently on either cheek. ‘Continental habits!’ shouted Mr Thompson, spitting neatly over the side, and stepping back, surveyed his friend. ‘Man, you’re a fine sicht. Hae ye a wife yet? I’ve got a lassie back there in Algiers that would dae ye a treat.’
‘How much?’ said Lymond instantly.
With an absent hand, Thompson pulled off the vile, salt-encrusted beret and scratched underneath. ‘Tell you what. Ye dinna want all they arblasters. Throw in the hackbuts and six oarsmen, my choice, and ye can have her. She’s rare at—’ said Mr Thompson, who believed in a specific bargain.
The Chevalier de Villegagnon, unstirred as a rule by frivolities, suddenly found in himself an impulse